Board of Health: April 5, 2022

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0:00 730 April 5th, 2022. 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 a right and or requirement to attend this meeting can be found on the Town of Marblehead’s website at https://www.marblehead.org-board-health under tonight’s agenda under agendas and tonight’s agenda. 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 1253-215-782 or 1301-715-8592 and if we can start with a poll, a roll call please, Andrew. Ms. Joanne Miller. Present. Ms. Helene Hazlett. Present. Dr. Todd Belfbecker. Present. And before we get to our agenda, I just want to recognize the horrible tragedy that occurred a couple weeks ago when James Galante lost his life and I want to have a moment of silence to recognize that and to tell his family

1:36 and his friends and his classmates that we are thinking of them and we offer our deepest condolences. So just a moment of silence, please. Okay, thank you. So the first item on our agenda is the COVID-19 update. All right, so as of April 1st, 2022, we’ve had a total of 3,424 cases so far. On the last two weeks, we’ve had 57 cases. As of April 1st, we had 49 active cases. We also had between March, during that two-week period, between March 18th and April 1st, we had approximately six probable cases. The cases for the age range, we had four cases from zero to four. We had 11 cases from five to 11. We had 19 cases from 12 to 19. We had three cases from 20 to 29, seven cases from 30 to 39, four cases to 40 to 49, five cases from 50 to 59, 15 cases from 60 to 69, three cases from 70 to 79, and two cases in 80 plus. The average daily incident rate per 100,000 actually went up last week, unfortunately, to 17.3. We’ve had a total of 104,307 total tests taken

3:12 so far. Total test for the last 14 days is 1,330, and obviously these are PCR tests that are recorded, and the percent positivity for the last 14 days is 3.61%, which went up slightly higher. Some of the bigger news is that the CDC, following FDA’s regulatory action external, CDC is updating its recommendation to allow certain immunocompromised individuals and people over the age of 50 who received an initial booster dose at least four months ago to be eligible for another mRNA booster to increase the protection against severe disease from COVID-19. Separately, in addition, based on newly published data, adults who received a primary vaccine and booster dose of Johnson & Johnson Janssen COVID-19 vaccine at least four months ago may now receive a second booster dose using the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. The town will be holding a clinic I believe in late April for boosters, and this will be open to the public. And we will also be handing out rapid tests at the same time. Obviously, we want to make sure that everybody takes precautions as the holidays approach, and we always recommend that you test before going to a large gathering, like a church assembly, a large function, a large family gathering. Obviously, COVID is still around. We’re still seeing cases, and we are seeing the new variant,

4:44 the B.A.2 variant in this area. So we want to remind people to still take precautions. And that’s it for at this point. Could I ask a question? Yes. I understand a lot of the facilities are closing for testing. Where would one go if they wanted to have a test? So obviously, the state is going to be relying on the rapid tests, and obviously rapid tests. You can purchase some CVS in places like that. So that is where they’re kind of expecting you to go. Obviously, you can contact your doctor’s office, and some doctor’s office will still be administering the PCR test. But if you take a rapid test, it won’t be in our figures. Is that correct? That is correct. So pretty soon the figures aren’t going to be very accurate. No, I mean, obviously, you know, some people will be going to the doctor after they have a rapid test. But yeah, I mean, you know, the country is switching over more from a PCR to a rapid test indication. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Joanne, would you give your mental task force update, please? Yes. Thank you very much, Todd. First off, before I jump into the mental health task force, I want to just share some feedback that I received about some of these updates that we give. And I really appreciated this feedback because we have public participation

6:19 and welcome understanding how we can do things better. And the feedback was that would I be able to articulate some of the acronyms that I use when I’m delivering the Marblehead Mental Health Task Force reports. And I do seem to, you know, go quickly in my update to be efficient and also throw out acronyms. And so I’m going to promise to do better and make sure that I articulate the acronyms so everyone can know what I’m describing in the report. So to update our most recent activity, our task force responded to the mental health concerns that arose facing our community as this vibrant young man tragically died two weeks ago. Many members of our task force responded to support the young people and the families that were affected by this loss. And at our last meeting, we were updated on the efforts that were met to respond to the grief and suffering at Marblehead High School. Our team coordinated with the staff at MHS and have built a program toward community outreach by preparing, partnering rather with the Riverside Community Care Trauma Crisis Team. This organization was alerted when a similar loss was felt in Nor, excuse me, Norwell, I want to say Norwood. In Norwell, they had a similar

7:51 loss of a young member of their community and this crisis team initiated a response. And so we have a program that we’ve developed. It’s going to take place tomorrow evening, April 6, at Marblehead High School. And we will have the Riverside Community Care team led by Lisa Macario, who’s going to facilitate a program with some of our Marblehead Mental Health Task Force members who are going to present a program helping the community understand grief and the process of grief, what to expect, and also some of the resources that we have available locally to meet these needs that are arising in real time. We have worked with the school and the school staff and hope to present a valuable program. And it’s kind of a quick turnaround. We’re hoping to get the word out and have a vibrant, vibrant conversation. Potentially, Marblehead TV may be able to produce the program for people that can’t attend, but we’re also going to be having it live streamed. So that information will be on the Marblehead Cares website for any community members that can’t participate in person at seven o’clock tomorrow night at the Marblehead High School. The task force is also planning a program on May 5th to build another community discussion. This, we’re hoping to have a program available for our senior residents in our community

9:26 and help tackle some of the problems and challenges with mental health that our senior residents are experiencing that have been exacerbating throughout COVID. We are looking forward to having our clinicians from Marblehead Mental Health Task Force as well as Sharon Doleber from the Marblehead Council on Aging. And she’s going to pull together a conversation about the tools and resources that are available for our community members that are struggling at this time. And we’re hoping to as well engage adult children of senior residents who may be finding new struggles and not knowing where to turn. We want to make sure we avail the resources and Sharon works front lines with this population every day. So she’s very keenly aware of what challenges people are experiencing and we’re going to put the program together and have these resources and have this conversation hopefully to enable people to feel empowered when they do encounter some of these challenges. We also have some more initiatives that are in development. We kind of pivoted with the crisis at our high school and with our young people, but we are building some programming with NAMI, which is the National Alliance on Mental Illness. And they’ve got some really impressive programming that we’d like to bring into our community. And so we’re coordinating with that

10:57 organization. So that’s the Marblehead Mental Health Task Force update. Thank you so much. Thank you. What’s really nice about what you’ve accomplished with this task force is you have these long-term issues that you’re dealing with, but when something of an emergency appears, you’re able to very quickly band together and help the community with emergent things as well. So that’s a really nice thing that you have the whole spectrum of issues that you are addressing. Thank you, Todd. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the wealth of talent and care that we have on our task force. It’s just an outstanding group of people who have lots of expertise and are committed to helping serve our community. And they came forward when asked. It was by ask and then by interview. And we had a difficult time selecting a group because they were also so wonderful and so knowledgeable in their field. So I think you’ve got a crackerjack committee. I agree. Thanks so much. And I also am very impressed that you’re able to do dual programming right now. So I know how difficult that is. And thank you for that. Thank you. You rose to the occasion.

12:27 Thank you, Helene. Thank you. So the next item on our agenda is a discussion with Dental Joyce about the file permit process. This is not a review of a file permit application. It’s more of an informational thing. Let me unmute you and welcome to the meeting. Thank you. I’m going to speak first and then I’m going to hand the floor over to our attorney, Yael McGinn. So can you also unmute her, please? Yael. Before you speak, though, Andrew, is there anything that you want to start with? No, sorry to cover it. I mean, I can all add some stuff in the end. But like you said, their application is not before us. It’s considered not complete application. Right. And that’s what we’d like to talk about tonight. Sure. You have the floor. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. So I would like to first start with why, just so you have a little background with why our family would like to have chickens, which is something we have been discussing in our family for the past few years. First of all, as we all know, you know, eggs, fresh eggs, your own eggs are going to be much more nutritious and higher in omegas than those bought at the store. And you can go and get them same day. Second, we are one cell closer to being self-sustaining, which is also resulting in a greener way of living with less damage to the earth. Third, chickens have unique

13:59 personalities and make great emotional support pets. And my children, as well as all the children, have gone through a lot of the pandemic. And my children are very, very interested in having chickens. And I would like them to be able to have chickens without my neighbors having it to making that decision for us as parents. Fourth, chickens are good for the environment. They eat grubs, earwigs, ticks, beetles, and all kinds of things, which, considering Lyme disease, is really good for our area. I’ve outlined in detail in our application, which was not accepted, the maintenance and care of the chickens in regards to the best management practices for poultry presented by the MassDAR. And that would be followed by us, as well as security for rodents. Sound would be not an issue because chickens sound only travels 25 feet, which is also, in another edition, it’s only as loud as the sound of a human conversation. So going on, after our permit application would not be accepted because our butters did not approve of the chickens, I reached out to Megan McGrath at the DAR again, and she pointed out that the facts about chickens and hens in particular, because you cannot have roosters here. And she did say that the noise of hens travels about 25 feet and is no louder than an average human conversation. She also told me that the smell of a coop is not an issue or considered a nuisance as long as the coop is maintained and properly ventilated. In addition, Megan pointed out to

15:32 me that rodents are not an issue, that chickens do not attract the rodents, I should say, but that if the food is left out and they’re not maintained properly, the coop, that’s what attracts rodents. And, you know, if everything that we’ve outlined in our plan would be followed, none of these would be an issue. In addition, I reached out to the Board of Health and Animal Control Officers in all surrounding towns because I found that marble has internal policies versus the bylaws really did not add up and did not seem reasonable to me. And I would like to point out that none of the requiring towns require that you obtain your butters permission or sign off. There are three out of the 11 towns that I discussed this situation with. They do require that you notify your butters, some one of them is seven days, some 14 days, and they also these three require a public hearing. The others do not even require that you notify your butters or that you have a public hearing. And one of these towns is our neighbor, Swamp Scott, and I talked to their Board of Health director and he kind of chuckled when I asked him, do you feel that your neighbors should, you know, decide this? Do you feel that roosters, I mean, that roosters hens would be a nuisance? And he said, I cannot imagine that four to five hens would be any louder than songbirds. Additionally, we feel that the current Board of Health internal policy requiring neighbors approval is, like I said, unreasonable. It is unfair to base a decision upon a neighbor’s hypothetical concern, and this policy results

17:06 additionally in uncomfortable scenarios amongst neighbors. The emotional and physical well-being of our family and what is best for our family should not be put into the hands of our neighbors. And with that, I would like to hand the floor over to Yale McGinn to speak. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I’m the one who I’ll, you can go forward. Oh, I’m so sorry. Just go through the chair. I would be great if you could please hand it over to her then. Yes, of course. So, yeah. Okay, thank you. So I’m just going to continue what Danelle said, and I’m going to talk about the legal aspect of this requirement. The requirement states that they, that anybody who applies for a foul permit needs a sign-off sheet from direct abutting neighbors. And it, from my understanding, is that if there isn’t a sign-off sheet from all the abutting neighbors, the Board of Health will not even think about the permit, will not even conduct a hearing. Basically, it is a prerequisite to a foul permit. Now, this is problematic in several issues. First and foremost is that this policy has never been adopted in our general bylaws. It is only a policy. It has never been voted on. In fact, I’ve never seen, I don’t even know if the Board of Health has ever voted on this specific policy. But if you go to the bylaws, the only requirements for a foul permit is one, you have to apply. Two, you have to contain a

18:37 statement of the number and kind of foul. And three, you have to do a statement of the conditions that may be required by the Board of Health and of course pay a fee. It does say that the Board of Health may require doable constructions and designs. It’s said that it needs to provide a tightly covered. However, there are no requirements in the bylaws to get the approval of the abutters. In fact, not allowing this permit like DeNau said on a hypothetical that it might cause an incense is actually unreasonable and even discriminatory. Basically, we’re saying that specific chickens on a specific road will become an incense. But other chickens on another road will not become an incense. Because as we know, there are several people, several households that do have chickens in their place. Doing something again on a hypothetical again is problematic because we’re not allowing the people who want a permit even a hearing. And if it is an incense, if it does become an incense, then the abutters do have a way to do something about it. In fact, there is authority in the bylaw that they can go to the Board of Health and the Board of Health may take away the permit. It’s also extremely arbitrary, as I said. Basically, we’re deciding who will have the chickens and who will not have the chickens.

20:08 And the biggest problem is, is that this decision making process is not done by elected people. It’s not done by the Board of Health, but it is done by residents. You are basically allowing for each and every resident the opportunity to deny or approve a neighbor’s permit for foul. So why do we even have the Board of Health if this specific power is in fact in the power of our residents? It’s unreasonable. It is capricious. It also strips the Board of Health, like I said, of all its jurisdiction. And one of the biggest problems with this requirement is it puts the residents in the power to determine who is going to have a permit and who is not. And it puts our residents in danger. People can escort their neighbors. They can say, you want chickens? Sure, I’ll sign the permit. Only if you pay my mortgage for two years. They’ll say, you want chickens? Sure, I’ll sign the permit. Give me sexual satisfaction for two years. Where does this stop? We are giving residents the power to determine something that is an absolute jurisdiction in the Board of Health within the people that we as residents have elected in our elections. It also violates the two process, it violates the constitutional

21:39 due process rights of all our residents. The fact that the Board of Health denies the choices, even the opportunity for our hearing based on a prerequisite from an approval from a neighbor strips the constitutional rights for due process. Every person in America, in the federal government, in the state government, in the local government has the right for a hearing. What if the people that actually do not approve the fact that the choices will have a permit are actually extorting them for money? You don’t know that because you’re not even conducting a hearing. As I said, you are not only stripping the Board of Health from this jurisdiction, but you are putting the rights and the determination for a permit that is in the hands of the Board of Health in each and every resident. What’s going to be next? Are we going to demand for anybody who wants a dog or a cat to get the authority of all their butters? Are we going to demand that people that want to have cherry tomatoes or sprouts need the authorization of every single a butter in their neighborhood? This policy should be abolished immediately. It is unconstitutional and it strips the Board of Health from its objection and it puts

23:09 the right to veto any permit from any resident in the hands of any other resident that puts other people in danger. I also ask the Board of Health, this is not the place to do that, but please give the choices their permits. They have applied, they submitted the application, they submitted the plans. We don’t even know if there’s going to be a nuisance. As I said, based on this hypothetical that there might be a nuisance on this specific street because of these specific chickens with these specific people is unreasonable. Thank you. Thank you. Todd, you do have one question from Mr. James Full if you want to entertain. Is this related to the chickens James? No, you have. One question. I got it. Could you hear me now? Yeah, we can hear you now. Okay, so this is unrelated and completely related to everything else that goes on in town. You guys are the Board of Health. We have bigger fish to fry, financially, governmentally, locally, whatever you want to call it. These people just want to have a couple of chickens in their yard and the governmental process and the complete BS over a neighbor complaining about them having chickens and we have neighbors

24:47 complaining over the transfer station. Why? Yale, thank you for your support for the choices. This is a non-issue. If they want to have chickens in their yard, it shouldn’t be up to a neighbor to tell them they can’t have chickens. The town bylaws are pretty straightforward. Boom, done. Am I wrong? Andrew, am I wrong? Is the Board of Health, am I wrong? So the Board has adopted a policy. We are doing the research to figure out exactly when the policy was adopted, but it goes back to as far as back to 2009, the required neighbors sign off before they could become before the Board. Okay, so now we’re getting into some some politic garbage yet again. They want a couple of chickens on their property. So if I want to let all the hawks and everything else live in my backyard, but I don’t want it, do I come to you? This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous. We are wasting town time, money, and everything else over someone wanting to put a couple of chickens in their backyard for eggs and I am standing by on the transfer station. And can I just add something? Sure. I feel also it’s important to point out that you know you’re supposed to follow the town setbacks, which is seven and a half feet from rear or side,

26:23 and we are proposing this at 75 to 80 feet from any single butter. So when we talk about the noise, the smells, the potential hypothetical for rodents, there’s really very little chance that that could ever affect any of the butters. Thank you. Thanks. It’s unbelievable. Later, Joanne, do you have anything to add? I’d just like to reiterate what you said, 75 feet away. Where is your location? We are on Haley Road and we have almost an acre lot. So we used to live on Pitman and when we were there, our kids were asking about chickens and we thought, you know, this is tight. It would have any room to play, right? After we get chickens, then we put them in a good position. And when we moved here, we finally were like, you know, we have the yard, we have the space. We can do this and do it in a respectful fashion to all of our neighbors. And then we took our application and Andrew would not even accept it. He would not even look at it because he convened it incomplete. So he wouldn’t even consider the whole situation as a package. Don’t blame the messenger. Right. No, I’m just saying that this would happen. And I hope that you guys also received the packet of information that I, you know, involve my research because there’s a lot of good research in there. And I spent a lot of time

27:57 talking to all the, you know, Board of Health and surrounding towns. And I know Marblehead doesn’t have to do something just because another town does. But I also feel that it is important that you respect individual rights and there’s a lot to this. And we should maybe keep up with the times of what other people are, you know, other towns are doing, especially if you’re saying this goes back to 2009. Are there more than one neighbor that’s complaining? So far we know of one, because Andrew got that. At that point, we kind of stopped even trying to work to get approval from the other neighbors. We have five abutters. We definitely got a sign off on two at that, knocked on doors for a week. And then I called Andrew. And he said, don’t worry about it. There’s nothing we can do because we got to, one of your neighbors hired an attorney. Yeah. I might be stepping out of turn and somebody will certainly tell me, but maybe you want to go back to the neighbors that you haven’t gone to. And it might help your other neighbor. And at the same time, our committee could review this. When we started, I was on the committee with Dr. Bufbacher when we started chickens. You weren’t on there before. It predates me. It does because you were so good at that with all your wonderful questions. But I do recall, and it was just a very new thing. And we did the best we can to protect neighbors concerns. And while you’re going through your neighbors, and we can be thinking about this and looking

29:34 into the similar things that you’re looking into about other communities and how are other people asking for chickens are doing, we haven’t had any complaints that I know of with people that do have chickens. And we know that the people that do have them love having it. So at first, it was a very new thing. And now people… We can hear the positive things that are happening with families and the fact that they like eating fresh eggs. So that’s my recommendation to the board. Could we put this on the agenda for next time and see what happens with the choices? They may get that other person coming forward after they hear that everybody else is favorable. Maybe we could drive by the property if you don’t mind. We won’t be snooping. I just want to see where it is. But that’s my suggestion. Does the rest of the board feel anything about those suggestions? I think that’s reasonable. As the policy stands, you can, if nothing were to change, you can come to us anytime with an application. That’s not the issue. It’s not like a one and done. I think that one thing that we need to be careful about is comparing to other towns because

31:08 Marblehead is a densely populated four square mile and some properties are bigger than others. But I think the policy was put in place just for institutional knowledge. The policy was put in place because it is such a dense town and it’s easier not to pick and choose. I would imagine that’s where it originated. But we are very dense and most neighbors, of all the chicken permits in town, there’s no neighbors who have complained to my knowledge. So it is just a matter of convincing everybody that there isn’t going to be a nuisance. I can say one thing. Another thing, some of the people offer eggs to their neighbors too. So that’s a nice thing to do. So just started off with that. If I can just interject, I’m a municipality attorney. I represent several towns, as many of you know. And I know a lot about permits, variances, licenses, etc. And there isn’t any permit or license or variance that is determined by a residence. All these things are determined by the boards, by people that are elected. There isn’t one thing that the prerequisites is the authorization of our neighbors. And you’re putting the neighbors in a very dangerous situation.

32:42 Basically what now you just said is, why don’t you just go and drive them? You know, I’ll give you eggs if you give me the permit. I’ll give you $10,000 if you give me the permit. This policy should have never been enacted and it should be abolished immediately because this is not only about the choice. This is about every single person that wants to apply for a permit. I mean, when people want to build another floor and it’s going to block a neighbor’s view, we don’t ask the neighbor to be okay with it, to permit it. No, there’s a hearing. The neighbor can get notice. The neighbor can come and be heard. The neighbor can even appeal, but they are not the people that get to determine who will receive our permits. And if the neighbors do get to determine who received their permits, then this whole permit should be immediately stripped from the Board of Health. Then why is it even in the hands of the Board of Health if the prerequisite is having the authorization of our neighbors? It just doesn’t make sense. And with all due respect, it’s illegal and it really violates our constitutional due process rights. This policy really should be double checked because what we’re doing to our neighbors is a violation. And like I said, we are putting them at harm’s way. And tonight, I think that, yes, one more thing and then we’re going to move on. I would just also like to say like Yale is saying, it has put us in a very uncomfortable situation with our neighbors. And so, you know, somebody that we only met, we moved in right prior to the pandemic

34:18 and we’ve known them just casually. Now there’s automatically this divide because of this policy and it is unreasonable. It’s unfair. I’ve talked to many attorneys and Yale is right. It is not reasonable. And the Board of Health is supposed to make reasonable regulations and that is what is outlined, you know, by the state. And so I do not feel it is our place to continue. I feel like I’m harassing my neighbors by, you know, we did the pamphlet, we did letters, we drew my kids drew pictures. I can’t keep knocking on doors and hoping that maybe somebody will talk to us. And this one neighbor who hired the attorney basically told us, we said, can we please talk about this? Can we talk about your concerns? And they said, no, there’s nothing to talk about and nothing you can do to change our mind. And that was it and walked away. And so that relationship we were starting to form is, I mean, it’s really hard now. How do you come back from that? And it’s because of the Board of Health policy that this is now the situation. Thank you. Thank you. Well, Helene, you wanted to go and have this on the agenda next meeting. Is that what your suggestion is? I recommend that. And I wasn’t asking people to go back and harass their neighbors. I was asking them to continue the project of asking each and every neighbor.

35:43 Some neighbors were not asked. Right. No, we’ve asked all. We’ve put letters in all the, everybody’s mailbox and we’ve knocked on doors. And so at some point you have to say, how much can I keep asking these people? I mean, we don’t really know them. Like I said, we moved in before the pandemic. Maybe they’re like, who is that stranger? I don’t want to answer the door for them, you know, or maybe they’re worried to answer the door for a stranger because of the pandemic. I don’t know. Maybe they don’t even live here full time. You know, I really don’t know the situation with every butter. Well, you’ll make the decision while we work on our side. Thank you. So we’ll table this for tonight, but we will discuss it again at our next meeting, which I believe is May 10th, but that could be wrong on the date off the top of my head. So we’re going to move on, but thank you for coming tonight. I just wanted to add that it’ll be important to understand more historically and this process and how it came to be that this is how we proceed so that we will commit to following up with you at our next meeting and having a better understanding of that. Thank you. Okay, so we’re going to move on and we’re going to have a transfer station discussion tonight as we stated at our last meeting is the night where we vote on plan A or plan B. And that will determine if we go to ask for funds at town meeting or not. I just want to rehash, we have the architect data here and we have the OPM Jerry Smith here. So we have

37:16 experts on hand. I do want to say that before we do any voting, plan A is, as many of you know, plan A is the $6 million new building, new facility. And if we vote to go forward with plan A, we will be going to town meeting to ask for the money. And that plan is pretty much set in stone. Plan B is a roughly 1.5 and we’ll get to the numbers more later, 1.5 million project, that it will not be the the brand new building, but it will be a rerouting of traffic and smaller buildings for the staff and for scale house, etc. We again, we’ll go into that. If we vote for plan B, we will not need to go to town meeting. And plan B, unlike plan A, is a basically an intention to move forward with that idea. It’s not a set in stone plan. We will have to go through planning board, we have to get traffic studies and we will explore more and more how to make it the best possible option. But if we vote for plan B, it’s not set in stone, plan A is set in stone. And I think that’s important to make that distinction. So I’m not sure Andrew, if you want to say that. Let me just bring up a copy of what N.A. is and what plan B is. I have to do them in two separate chairs. But I want to make sure I can do this. So let me try to

38:49 bring this up. And while you’re bringing it up, I will have public comments after our discussion before our vote. And I hope that this will be a civil and respectful discussion. And as always, with our public comment, we’re having a two minute per person commentary. You’ll raise your hands and be recognized in the order you raise your hands. Okay, go ahead, Andrew. So for whatever reason, it’s not allowing, it’s my files. Let me see if I can do this. Sorry, that’s a technical difficulty. Now, everybody see this? We can see your files. We can see your,

40:30 you can’t, you know, see the option A. Just saw the word. Just the, it’s not opened yet on the screen. It’s a PDF right now. You see that? Yeah. Yes. So this is option A. So this is what the original committee designs after we had to do some redesign. The main ideas with this is try to create a facility where we can have options to grow. So we wanted to try to separate the residential from the commercial as much as possible. One of the issues with the site is the access from Woodbun Terrace, especially with the commercial and the residential trying to share space. So with this plan, you have a large area on the front hand side for residential to enter, and they would be throwing the trash away on the front, which is the front to Woodbun Terrace. And the commercial would be on the back side. Now, obviously, like we said, the idea with this is to try to, what we call future proofing. So we don’t know what NASTEP is going to say in the future, but one of the concerns that we have is separation of material. Obviously, the requirements will always be that we can get rid of what we consider residential household material, but we also take a lot of other waste, a lot of construction demolition material,

42:01 a lot of other clean out material. Construction demolition material is a concern, and at some point, it might become banned from certain landfills or certain facilities. The idea of this proposal is to have what we call a sorting floor. So commercial would go onto the back side. They can either dump right into the pit. If it was a trash truck full of residential trash, that could dump right back into an open top trailer. Construction demolition material could be dumped on the sorting room floor. If we had an option to recycle or send the construction demolition to another facility, you could pull wood apart from gypsum and stuff like that and try to separate different objects. Some of it might be going to the back of the open top, but that would be the idea with this. The other large piece of this is that it gives us a large area to park our large equipment inside. So we have a large loader, a front end loader, a backhoe, and a roll-off truck. This equipment currently is stored outside. Like most construction sites, that’s how it’s generally done, but this would give us an area to store that equipment inside. One of the main issues that we have with the site is that it’s limited to have one scale. So even with this proposal, we have a crossover between residential and commercial traffic, where it essentially press process. And that’s one of the biggest concerns. So for option A,

43:35 the pros of it are really the future proofing of the building, allowing us to potentially separate material later on, parking equipment inside, and obviously a larger residential drop-off area. Currently, there’s only several spaces going into one compactor. This is giving you more spaces and more freedom for residents to feel not crowded by each other. Some of the cons of this project are the expense. Obviously, this is a much larger project, and we would need to go back to town meeting, and if passed there, it would need to go to a full town vote. This also has traffic crossing issues, and this project would consist of a very large building, a large retaining wall, and a very large fill area. So this would disrupt dump activity for an extended period of time. I believe the estimated construction project is 18 months. We would, if possible, even option A would still benefit from the use of Green Street. Again, we would have to try to sort that out. Like we all said, we would need the help of a traffic consultant. One of the largest concerns with this project is the financial ask of the town. Let me go to option B. So you now should see option A. Can you guys see this?

45:20 This is B, correct. So option B would be the installation of a new scale house, the relocation of the scale, a new staff support building. They would redo the existing pit structure, the compactor itself. We would have a new staff kiosk in the back where we could sell stickers, accept fees, and deal with some of the miscellaneous recycling materials, and obviously a new swap shop. Obviously, this can be completed with existing funds. Obviously, we have received some estimates. We’re continuing to refine these estimates, and obviously we need to do some additional work on the traffic consulting. This would be a much shorter time impact to the transfer station operations. The long-term estimates for construction would be no longer than a year, and obviously a much smaller construction project. The use of Green Street would eliminate traffic conflicts between commercial and residential users, and this would improve the experience for commercial and residential users and staff. Obviously, the cons of this project is the potential impact of Green Street and the Arnold Terrace residents, and it does not provide a place to park equipment inside. Obviously, it does not provide food proofing or sorting floor that we could use for other recyclables. Questions?

47:05 Could you just clarify not only the board, but those of us listening, as far as A and B, where the entry and the departure is for A and B, and A, whether it’s the commercial and residential or both? Okay, so for option A, the commercial and residential entrance and exit was Woodfin Terrace, so where the current entrance and exit is today. For option B, it is proposed that the Green Street would be the entrance for both commercial and residential, and the exit would be Woodfin Terrace. So each group, residential and commercial, will be using the same entry and exit on each project, no matter what it is? Correct. Correct. Okay, thank you. Has it been considered of having the entrance on B to be switched, and the entrance and the exit to be switched? Can you go in on Woodfin and out on Green? So the issue with option B, using Woodfin Terrace as the entrance and Green Street as the exit,

48:40 is that you would be traveling in the opposite direction with traffic. So if I’m driving through the facility and I’m now going up to the yard waste area, I’m driving on the left-hand traffic, which is just not what we’re, you know, we want to try to make people comfortable using the facility, and our concern would be that, you know, potentially there would be some issues with that. There would be issues. Is that something that a traffic study could study? That is something a traffic consultant could look at. But right now you see that it’s not really positive. Yeah, you would have to add some additional barricades to make sure that you do not have traffic in the wrong lanes, especially if you’re traveling on the, you know, which would be the left-hand side of the road. So also one last question about that. Would it also be creating the crisscrosses that we’ve been trying to avoid? So if you use that entrance for Woodfin Terrace for option B, you would still have crossover with residential and commercial use, because commercial would have to go all the way out through the recycling area to come, you know, to try to go across the scale. So you would have some crisscrossing over, where with what was proposed for option B, your commercial and residential are totally separate. I mean, obviously, they’re coming in on Green Street, you know, single file, and then they separate from each other. But you’re not having this crossing over.

50:17 To my eye, I didn’t measure it or walk it or anything to measure. I did walk it, but I didn’t measure it as I walked it. Is the Woodfin entrance a shorter distance than the Green Street? I mean, we will have less waiting in line because of the longer distance is what I’m thinking, but I’m asking that if that’s appropriate. So there’s different things that you could do to eliminate queuing up of trucks on the outside of Green Street. You could adjust times that commercial vehicles are allowed into the facility. You could adjust gates. So rather than have the gate on Green Street be right close to the gate, when we open up that gate at seven o’clock, we can have gates further into the facility to allow vehicles to queue up until 730 when we’re ready to deal with them. Is it a longer road though? So the distance between the entrance of Green Street all the way up to the scale is much longer than the distance from the front of the gate out to technically Beacon Street, the distance of Woodfin Terrace. Which would allow for more trucks also. Vehicles, whichever they are. Now, if you’re lining up on wherever Green Street are, Woodfin, trucks and residential automobiles or residential vehicles line up

51:49 in the same line. That’s correct. So currently when we get there in the morning, we have vehicles waiting to be let in at 730. It doesn’t matter which they are. They just know they’re both commercial and residential. And then occurs also at lunchtime. I thank you very, very much for answering. Yeah, a long block time. Yep. Okay. Joanne, I know you had a meeting with neighbors at Arnold Terrace. I don’t know if you want to talk about how that went. Yes. On March 24, Thursday, March 24, we had a meeting with the residents at Arnold Terrace and they came in good faith and sat down with us so that I could hear and better understand what the concerns were. At our last meeting, I really appreciated some of the points that were raised and I wanted to learn more. And I learned so much. I really appreciate the specifically David Lieberman shared with me his opinions and he articulated them very patiently and powerfully. And he really did help me understand the concerns of Arnold Terrace. And so I think I spent a great deal of time kind of trying to

53:21 consider how we can potentially better address these needs and concerns and working with the project owner and Andrew and picking their brains because they’ve been working on this for a decade and I’m very new eyes to this process. And we looked at it upside down and backwards and I struggled to not be satisfied. We want to be good neighbors, of course, to the community that’s there. And when we, almost every possibility that we were considering really needed the traffic studies. So I think it’s very important to understand how that’s going to impact this area. And typically, a traffic study is a safety standard and it’s important to consider that and that will be incredibly valuable proceeding forward with plan B. But I do think community conversations are very valuable and so we can understand what the concerns are and then seek to see if there is a way to proceed with a really favorable approach. And there was a lot of time and energy and consultation and I really appreciated the patience that the project owner

54:58 gave me with all of my battery of questions and Andrew as well. Very patient because I have to say I don’t know much about construction and probably less about traffic and so valuable conversations and I did learn that plan B is difficult to amend.

55:32 Thank you for meeting with our own Taurus neighborhood and getting an exchange dialogue started. Helene, I see you want to say something? Yes, I just wanted to add I appreciate the fact that Joanne met with them. I would have loved to have gone but we were a three-member board and we could only have, unless we call it a meeting, which would be difficult because people at meetings don’t go as fluidly as if there was a conversation that they had. But I appreciated the fact that Mr. Lieberman sent his four page document to us because I learned a lot more of the concerns and I appreciate those concerns because as he stated many of them are health related and thank you for doing that and I certainly have read it and it sort of helped me to know what happened at the meeting. Everybody did receive a letter from David Lieberman. Do you want to allow him to read it into the record? I think that’s fine. It is long. It will probably take a while to read but if you would like to read it that’s okay. If David would like to read it he could definitely read his letter into the record. Give me a thumbs up if you want to read

57:04 it. Would you like to read the letter? I didn’t feel the need to read the entire letter verbatim. I gathered that under some circumstances document submitted without having to be read out loud. I don’t know if you want to miss out on that. I’m content with the board having had access to it as well as published in the patch and in the reporter at this point. So folks in the community want access to it can see it in either of those places. I was hoping to maybe to respond to one or two things that have been said this evening if that’s an option. Sure we’re not quite at the public comment part but I will definitely recognize you again. I don’t want to waste anybody’s time by reading a four-page sentence-based document aloud in this meeting. Okay if you want to it’s your it’s your prerogative. We’re happy to hear it but if you if you don’t want to that’s that’s also fine. I don’t think that it would be okay. Okay so we’ll recognize you again when you when you want to have another discussion. Okay so before we get to public comment is there anything else Helene, do you want to ask Deanna, Jerry, Andrew? No I just want to state that you know if you do go forward with option B that

58:34 you do want to hire a traffic consultant. So you know they should be looking at peak period and daily traffic counts to identify issues during both peak and off peak times. You’d want to have some field observations during peak times by a traffic engineer. They wouldn’t want to take site distance measurements. They would want to review the crash history based on police department records for that area and that this would also give you an estimate of traffic flow and operational changes that need to occur to West Shore Drive intersections under current and future conditions. And obviously we would want a written report of the findings and related recommendations. And that would be done before any construction would begin. Yeah so you’re going to have to go to the planning board to have seek approval. You will need this you know you’ll need a traffic consultant on board. There’s a good chance that the the planning board would also require a peer review of that of this work. Is there a sense of how of the whole project? Is there a sense of what a traffic consultant would cost? The estimates are eight to ten thousand dollars. And how long does it take to get one? Honestly you know I believe would be several weeks.

59:57 Sorry, sorry Joanne. No that was that was I’m interested to know how quickly one of those could be arrived. We could get one of those. I think it’s really going to depend on staff availability. So the planning board meets once a month, we would have to get on it at January. We have a ways to go before, you know, we need obviously the boards, you know, decide in which direction they’re going to go. We need, depending on that decision, we don’t have a full set of plans and specs for option B. That would all need to develop. With that, we would not want to make sure the traffic consultant is on board early on to take a look at all these issues. If there are any issues, bring those to our attention. How long would that take? We would have to talk to the traffic consultant to get an estimate of time. And with none of this, oh, it doesn’t, we don’t have to wait for annual meeting. We can do it tomorrow. Correct. The first step is to get an appointment with the planning board. The first step is for the board to decide which direction they’re heading, option A or option B. Oh, I meant after that. Which we will decide tonight. Yeah. Andrew, may I make one comment, please? And this is probably an architect’s worst nightmare to design on Zoom, but I was wondering if you could pull up the plan of option B and zoom in at the entrance.

1:01:37 I think I can zoom in, but I can put, I can actually pull up option B. Okay. I think if you look at the cursor up top, maybe the plus sign, maybe it will zoom in. Is Dana, we are architect for the site. There’s a plus sign. There you go. There’s a possibility here that we have a hybrid that may solve some problems. And that is exactly like you said before, Andrew, where you have three entrances off of Beacon Street. And that first entrance is that you say is the left hand driver left hand side, it would be the red line. That would be for residential. And then the second two egress and ingress would be commercial only wrap around as we discussed the other day. And then put the staff attendance and scale house building in the middle of the circle for commercial that would keep commercial on Beacon Street. And residential egress on Green Street. That’s all the laddies problem. And something we can start to draw up, but that may be one thing for option B that would help the process. If I could go right over and kiss you right now, I would. Dana, I think that’s excellent possibility considering to be a part of the project.

1:03:14 I think that’s a possibility considering to your point that would minimize the. In the number of vehicles coming in on the Green Street entrance correct. It would be no vehicles entering Green Street, only egress and only residential. And actually, anyone that needs yard waste. What trucks, but it would be yard waste, not using a pit. Now the next question is what are the drawbacks with that. And may I may I say another I should say one one drawbacks. Excuse me, I’m sorry. Pardon me, go ahead. I’m sorry, I just also had kind of looked at something like that and it looked like the, the turn the angle for the trucks coming into turn to go over the scale for the commercial turn was was an angle that wasn’t idea. So, this would have to be rerouted have to all be run by civil traffic engineers. This is just kind of flying on the on the cuff right here but it’s I think it may be possible. And the one additional thing I would recommend is that we put the pit scale immediately adjacent to the scale house. And then an additional scale. So then you would have someone ingressing Wade dumping and then egressing while we and that would eliminate some of the queuing time.

1:04:49 There would still be this this, this is still a problem with viewing at this area with commercial. It’s a tight, tight run so it. I mean, it may be some difficulties but this is one, one possibility that we can take a look at. So when we say option B I don’t want to say that there’s only one option B. This is all based on study. So there’s got to be a lot more work and input from everyone. Thank you Dana. Yes, thank you. That’s still one scale you said because you were saying no I would propose maybe, maybe, if we can afford it, you know, by maybe putting the scale house and staff attendance going together and that little donut between circulation and the donut hole I guess. We’d save a little money there and then maybe we can afford a second scale. And that second scale would, would, would save some time and traffic. And then we have a space for it. Possibly. Again, this is a nightmare, designing on zoom. So, we’ll, we’ll see if that may, that’s a possible possibility. What this shows those that we’re not set in stone with plan B. That’s my point. Yeah. Well, I think that is excellent news because I think that our goal as a board is to build a transfer station for the town that is the best possible transfer station that we can create for the town.

1:06:28 It’s a tremendous resource for our community. I’ve spent a lot of time up there recently and it is extremely well managed. I was just talking to someone I had someone tell me that the staff there is outstanding. Someone said she her daughter threw the keys in the residential garbage dumpster and they said no problem and retrieved keys. And I would just like to take a moment to just appreciate what we have here. And I appreciate Dana’s comments and his, his posture that we are going to make the best transfer station that we can. I think earlier points earlier conversations we had as a community Mr Fuller you know you were boldly sharing your ideas, and I think as we convene ideas, we can achieve that outcome so I just want to thank you so much Dana and everyone’s feedback and insights, it’s invaluable. I think, unless there’s any more between the board and Andrew Dana, it’s time we can have some public comment does that sound good for everybody. I don’t have any more questions but I certainly have some statements before we vote. Okay, yes. Voting will be the last part of this agenda item. We’re going to go in the order raised hands like I said before, two minutes a person, and we’ll start with Mr. Fuller and if you can introduce yourself again please, as you start.

1:08:03 Absolutely James full 21 cheaper Avenue. My first question, yes or no. Halleen, have you been on any of these Board of Health meetings. Yes or no. Any of what, we’re gonna have some. Okay, we’re gonna have questions. Question answered. My next question is the traffic study on Green Street. In order for the traffic study to work, you need to open Green Street gate and allow traffic to flow in and out. I don’t need a civil engineer, or anybody to tell me how a traffic study is going to work, unless you use both the entrance entrance to the transfer station. Yes or no. That would need to be if our consultant is that’s what they want. That’s what we’d have to entertain. You can’t do a traffic study without having the ingress and egress at the same time. I’m just saying on that question Andrew. End of story. Okay. My third question. Mr. Lieberman, you live at the transfer station. You purchased your home at the entrance to the transfer station, as well as everybody else on the west side of Green Street. Your home is built on an environmental disaster. This is up on the corner of Green Street and West Shore Drive, environmental disaster. The entrance to the dump. Traditionally, up until I would have to research the actual date was on Green Street.

1:09:42 I sense a big boatload of not in my backyard right now from you. I’ve had selectmen call me. I’ve had other people call me asking why people are calling me as a selectman about the ingress and egress from the dump. The solution to this problem is one way in, one way out. It eliminates traffic. And furthermore, the next step, which we’ll get to in like six or 10 or 12 months is if you’re worried about the backup at lunchtime. Let’s stagger our employees lunch breaks at the dump. So that there’s a continuous flow of traffic in and out of the dump from opening to closing. And then, Mr. Lieberman, I am sorry, you and your neighbors purchase land next to the dump. I apologize for the fact that you did, but that’s what it is. We need to be real, and we need to have serious conversations about the tax implications of this whole thing. Thank you. And just a reminder that it’s a public comment to the board but not to members of the audience. It’s not a, it’s not an open forum tonight. I look forward to an open forum, Todd. David Lieberman, if you could just introduce you, but if you can introduce yourself, please. David Lieberman, five, so the only thing I’ll say since I was called out specifically here is nobody held a gun to the town’s head and said you must zone this region for residential housing town made that choice.

1:11:20 And it now has a responsibility to the people who move here in that faith in an understanding of how the land is going to be used. And it doesn’t get the town doesn’t have a license to put our health at risk, because we’ve been sitting here on land that town zone for us to live on. So I reject that claim, period, full stop. Now, I’m very happy to hear Dan’s proposal. I’d like to I’d like to hear that explored more fully. In terms of, Andrew has said this a couple of times that the plan B, one solution that’s been on the table eliminates traffic within the station, it does. It offloads that crisscross traffic onto Green Street where it mixes with other traffic through traffic also trying to make its way along Green Street. So I just don’t see that that’s a win, apart from just offloading the responsibility to some other part of the community. I’m very happy to hear that seriously talking about a real third party disinterested traffic study about the uses of the ground, the grounds here. I very much hope that that will also involve a meaningful environmental impact study to include the impact of exposure to diesel fumes on the part of the families living along the access for itself. Where, by the way, on Thursday morning, I watched a truck with absolutely no traffic constraints on it whatsoever pause an idle for 15 minutes within 20 feet of the homes that are parked that are there along that access room.

1:12:55 He didn’t have any good reason to stop. He wasn’t blocked by traffic. He had a free route in front of him. He just sat there for 15 minutes, I think. So the proof of the proof is in the pudding in terms of how well we can hope that people are going to respect whatever rules are put in place about the use of that road. As far as I know right now, I don’t know if there’s any no idle rules there, but if there is, it’s not being enforced and it’s not being observed. Sorry, 10 more seconds. I think that concludes everything I wanted to bring into this conversation. I was actually in a much better space before I was personally attacked, so I’m sorry if I was a little sharp. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Respond to comment. There is a no idling the entire community. So if there can be a sign there. So I would say I would authorize it immediately. All right, next up is Tom. Joanne, I want to commend you on reaching out to Arnold Terrace. And then I just have three questions, kind of a little drawn out. Tonic Man, One Gregory Street. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it came to my attention that the volunteers at the swap shop still have to pay for their transfer station sticker. Do you think something like that should be revisited? I think it would be nice. And the small token of appreciation for those volunteers that the fee was waived. It was just relayed by Joanne the appreciation for the transfer station workers, which I agree with.

1:14:29 I know Terry Toro has brought up several times about the unacceptable conditions of the current trailer, including rodent infestation. Considering any marblehead business would be shut down by the Board of Health under those conditions. Do you think, especially since it’s only a few thousand dollars and takes a few days that you should take this seriously while you’re looking at spending millions of dollars on bigger plans? And lastly, I also wanted to ask if we’re talking about how to improve the transfer station, which includes reducing traffic congestion. Doesn’t it seem counterproductive that one of your current members would be causing a traffic pile up at the entrance on Saturday because they were trying to get signatures on their nomination papers for their next election? I’ll leave it at that. Okay. Next up is Angela Ellis. Angela Ellis, I live at 119A Green Street. I’ve lived here for two and a half years, but I’ve been a marblehead resident for 27 years. I really wanted to ask, you know, what consideration the Board of Health had given to the 120 plus households that would be affected by this decision on option B. I walked up and down Green Street and Waterside Terrace, ringing doorbells and asking people to attend this meeting, actually. And, you know, there’s a lot of concern about this, the impacts on the neighborhood, the traffic, the noise, the pollution.

1:16:02 And it just strikes me, you know, that this is being visited on, you know, perhaps one of the least affluent places in town, you know, not sure this would happen in another neighborhood. Okay. I mean, I’m just very disappointed this was really even on the table, but I’m very pleased to hear from the architect that there are some other options that would be considered. And also that you would agree there is a need for a traffic study. I mean, Green Street is a speedway. I mean, those of you who don’t live on Green Street may be unaware, but there is traffic just whizzing up and down Green Street the whole time. The idea of having back to traffic and extra queues is just crazy to me. Of course, we’re interested in in preserving our property values. I’m not denying that. I mean, there’s a there’s that is a question for those of us who’ve invested in properties on Green Street. So I just asked the board. I mean, if the board decides on option B tonight without having the traffic study, I mean, wouldn’t it be better to just delay the deciding on the option until you’ve had these other traffic and environmental studies. It seems like you’re rushing into something. And when Andrew said you want a future proof the site, I mean, surely that would be a more sensible thing to do in any case, bearing in mind what might be needed in future in terms of sorting trash and so on. Anyhow, that’s my that’s my point. And thank you for the opportunity to speak. Thank you.

1:17:33 Next is Jean. Thank you. And this is Jean Lambkin of 19th, Deborah Street. And I think I’m just going to pick up the theme that Angela just mentioned with five points, but they come around the same question of this, this feeling that despite there is the passage of time this rush to make a vote that will bind us to one path or another, where the paths definitely have different pros and cons and opinions. And I noted that earlier in the evening at one point, I think at the outset, Andrew, you kind of recap the options. And it may have just been how I heard it, but it seemed like having to go to town meeting was kind of called out as a feature of an option, as maybe something I won’t go so far to say to be avoided. But it was interesting to me that that was a feature of the option or something to note of option A, that it requires town meeting, whereas option B does not. And I would just say that in spirit of the prior comment, I think this whole thing should be discussed at town meeting because we need our talent to understand the significance of this decision. And I’ll just continue on the other four points. In the review, you mentioned that option A has going for it, that it’s future-proofed.

1:19:04 And I always think about that as trying to sort of engineer and design for flexibility and agility and to not be caught out where things change and you can’t adapt. Yet Joanna, later on, mentioned that she understood that option B would be difficult to amend. So we hold two options that clearly are at polar opposite. So if we go back to sort of goals and strategies, we have one that we’re saying is future-proofed and one that is maybe the opposite of future-proofed. And I think we should just be able to understand and really get at the finer points of that, as opposed to just passing the statements along. The other thing that – So you sent you 10 seconds to go. The notion that option B needs a traffic study. The traffic study will be get findings, that we get more recommendations, that we get more costs. So I don’t understand how you could vote on an option that you don’t yet have a full sense of what it entails. And then lastly, all of the good ideas of potentially ways to amend option B sound like the emergence of option C. And I don’t want to sound like a grumpy mom, but like I’m pretty sure a month ago, I asked if we could consider an option B and have a more fulsome option C, rather, discussion. And I would like to reiterate that. And lastly, asked multiple times in the past, I think Jimmy’s this in this year, could we not create a citizen commission so that we can have a dedicated group to work on this more than once every six weeks on an evening Zoom?

1:20:44 Next is Mark. Thank you. This is Mark Fowler. I’m a resident of the transfer station, as I’m now known. You know, would love to not make this personal, but, you know, the condescension on display tonight kind of makes it personal. But I will just say that in the spirit of trying to be cooperative here, you know, we do really want to hear the town’s options and understand them. And I am fascinated by what was presented tonight by the architect because it does actually extend the conversation into some possibilities that would largely address, I believe, anyway, you know, the biggest concerns, not all necessarily, but the biggest concerns. And, you know, finally, as a resident here, lifelong resident of Marblehead, you know, a kid who rode their bike up that dump road years and years ago, having moved in here, that dump road was not largely accessible. It was largely overgrown. So the idea that we bought on the dump is a little bit jaded, you know, but hey, people buy what they can do. You know, I grew up on welfare and I’m happy to be where I’m at now, raising my family on Arnold Terrace. And I’d like to keep the neighborhood, you know, as good as we can for the citizens that live here and the members of the community that live here. And I think you’d find that we’re reasonable if we just have a conversation about what the mitigation options might look like. And so, you know, the option line up all the traffic on green and bring it up that road is the one that I think is bringing the greatest amount of objections. So I would just, you know, ask us to have that conversation. Option C, you know, as it might be called, sounds like an interesting one to explore that has not been fully explored.

1:22:17 Thank you. Next up, Mr. Jay. Yeah, this is Jeremy Bumog and I live in 7 Arnold Terrace. So I’m just going to carry forward on a couple of themes that other people have been going with. But I just I really want the board to understand that, you know, there are at a minimum 20 homes that if that road is opened up to regular day in and day out traffic, there are 20 people who purchased their house with zero expectations of that being the case. This is going to be a day in, day out, seven day a week, often when those people are at home, distraction and health threat to them. It’s not the right choice. You need to look at other options. And if you look at the option of open that road, it needs to be the absolute bare minimum to create the desired effect at that dump. It doesn’t sound to me like there are decisions that have been made. There are two options. I can’t for the life of me figure out why we’ve narrowed it down to two options without getting real strong input from the great architects who live and work around here and are involved in this project. There should be a study that involves lots and lots of input to come up with a range of options and a price point that works for the town and focuses on the other side of the facility.

1:23:59 Focusing any of it on an area that’s residential over an area that’s commercial is a faulty way of doing business. And it’s the easy way out for the board and for Andrew. It’s tough to go to town meetings. It’s tough to tell the town that they’re maybe not going to have the best functioning dump in the world. But you’ve got to make life good, quality, healthy for your neighbors when you have that choice. Please make the right choice. Please take care of the people who live in the neighborhood on this side. And I’m not saying dump it on the people on the other side. I’m saying that that’s mostly a commercial district that’s already been developed around the existing impacts. It doesn’t have the same level of impact over on Beacon Street. Please make the right choice. Okay, thank you. And finally, it looks like our last hand raises. Sean? Hi, Sean McHugh from 26 Beach Islands. How are you? Good, how are you? My comment is that I don’t think that this, first of all, I think the board has a tough job, what you’ve been dealing with, with the pandemic. But in regard to the new transfer station, I don’t think the board is fit for purpose.

1:25:29 And I don’t think you’re going to get the extra money from town meeting. And I doubt very much you will. And the reason why is, and when I say not fit for purpose, is that there’s no oversight committee. And I think there are people in this town, like my childhood friend, Michael Rocket, who has donated a lot of time to the town, and in redoing schools, who has experience in major construction as an oversight. They should be engaged to help out. And from what I’ve seen, and I’ve been following the meetings, that that’s not being considered. So, whatever you vote on, whether it be option A or option B, I believe that you should have an oversight committee and ask members of the town, like Michael Rocket, who’s had a ton of experience to help out. That’s all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. We have Carol now. You can introduce yourself. Yes. Hi, my name is actually I go by Michelle. My husband and I, we just bought the new. Prachat. Thank you. We just bought the new homes that were just recently built on Green Street that are still being built.

1:27:05 One, we were never told this was an option. This would happen. And another thing is basically this street that we’re directly right on Green Street. It’s a lot of kids that go up and down the street on their bikes. A lot of people walk on the street. I walk a lot with my dogs and the street itself is it can be very dangerous because there’s a lot of cars, a lot of big trucks that go up and down this road already. We’ve already had some accidents since I’ve been here. So to have even more traffic come up and down the street and it’s not a leveled street to begin with. And during the winter time, I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like. I just think it’s just a very bad decision and wrong decision. Already there’s, you know, I can imagine all the trash, it’s going to be all over the street, the traffic itself and sometimes I can’t even cross the street because it’s so, so dangerous to begin with sometimes. So to have added traffic going up and down the street and winter time, I just think it’s just not a very safe and good option for us. And I’m kind of disappointed because we just recently moved here and to have this going on and we didn’t know about it. It’s kind of a, you know, a disappointment. Thank you. Thank you. All right, next is Richard.

1:28:39 I’m Richard Hossler. I live at four Arnold Harris. I am probably the closest person to the access road. My deck is about 10 feet above the access road. I’ve lived here for about 30 years. I’m an original owner. And the thing that really concerns me is with the truck traffic, the commercial truck traffic, going in and out, coming in, they start at about five, well, Monday morning they woke me up at 5.30. They woke me up at 5.34 in the morning and they’re going all day. But coming out, the commercial truck traffic has to point out and cars coming down Green Street, going towards West Shore Drive have to pull out into the left lane to go around them. So that concerns me on a traffic issue. But having to have the trucks, the commercial trucks actually stop at 5.30 in the morning on Green Street, get out of their truck to open up the gate and then get back in to go in is quite a disruption, especially in the summertime when Windows are open and diesel fumes are coming in. And I’ve also noticed that I’ve been starting to see some wall cracks since this commercial traffic’s been coming through. Now, I can’t

1:30:14 guarantee you 100% that it’s from the commercial traffic. I don’t know. But I’ve just noticed it and I haven’t seen it in probably 25 years. And that’s the only things I want to say. I just figured out how to raise my hand. Okay. Well, thank you. Next is initial P. Hi. My name is Pamela. Can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. What’s your last name? Felice. Okay. Welcome. So I just recently moved to the street about a month ago. And I have lived in Marblehead for over nine years now. But I’m very concerned over this topic because I think it’s an issue with traffic. Before this event was put in the table, I think the traffic study should have been done just to monitor where are we heading. And my other big concern is that we’re right near the transfer station on Green Street. And this is also a major area for our green space and pollution. So I think those are two major factors that need to be taken into consideration before putting this project out there. A lot of research is needed before even going further with this. And that will be all.

1:31:45 Would you give your address, please, Pamela? It’s 143 Green Street. Thank you. Next up is the initial B. I’m unmuting you. Hi, yes. My name is Benjamin Nieditz. I live at 153 Green Street, part of the new development next to the transfer station. And I would just echo the other concerns that it seems incredibly foolish to make a decision without the research being done first to make an informed decision, including the town. As a new purchaser in the area and as a new resident of Marblehead, I really would have expected more of the town. But I appreciate the fact that there is an open forum, and I would really hope that the town does what is right, which would be, in my opinion, to conduct an appropriate study and make an informed decision after that information has been given. And that’s all. Thanks. Mr. Art, excuse me. Yes. It’s Helene. Would you mind telling these new residents that there has been a study and that you’ve sat on it and how long it was going on? Yeah, I mean, before, that’s true. The whole transfer station looks different than it did five years ago because there was a massive cap put on to cover over-contamination

1:33:20 from decades and decades of use. And so there was a traffic study done, I don’t remember which year off the top of my head, probably around 2014-15. I don’t know. Do you know Andrew? It was before I got here. But that was for the internal workings of the transfer station. I don’t believe it was an external traffic study. And obviously, there was a solid waste facility committee that looked at the facility at that time. Okay. Thank you. And thank you for mentioning that. One thing I would bring to light is just, I mean, a lot of things have changed in the past five-plus years, as I’m sure we can all agree. So I think it’s definitely the right decision to conduct a new study where we can maybe get some more recent or relative findings. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So if there’s no further hands, it’s time for our discussion. Do we want to vote to approve plan A or to approve plan B? I do want to reiterate that plan B is not set in stone. We’ve said that several times. If we do choose to do plan B, we would want to do a traffic study. I think we all have agreed on that. And we can see from what Dana the architect said that there’s still room to improve and I think that’s important. Do either of you

1:34:56 want to discuss further or do you want to just make a motion? I have one other question before we discuss that was brought up. Each time that we’ve met, that we’ve been, it’s been mentioned that the, about the unfit conditions over at the transfer station. It seems that, it seems that we’ve been told and I’ve gone up there to look and I’ve asked and seen with my own eyes that each and every one of those areas that are in question have been taken care of. It’s, believe me, it’s not the Taj Mahal up there, but it’s temporary. And I think that it’s safe and clean though and the people that are working there are satisfied. And our director is satisfied and he’s up there every single day. And I think that if he weren’t satisfied with the working conditions of his employees, because I’m sure as much as we want them to be happy, he wants them to be happy. So I hope that maybe Andrew put that question that we’ve been getting every meeting. And if it’s not correct, and as the citizens have said, that people aren’t telling the truth, I saw it with my own eyes. So I don’t need, I’d like to hear the people tell me that they’re happy. But if they’re only saying that

1:36:26 because they don’t want to tell someone who’s in a position that is of authority, so to speak, I start myself, but I’d like Andrew to please tell us how long that trailer can last, because I think it sounds like it’s a couple of years till we get this project finished. And that’s my question before we start for vote. So the trailer was always designed to be temporary. And obviously trailers can be long term solutions, but this trailer was designed to be temporary. We were hoping at the time when we brought the trailer on, we were between the landfill closure and the start of the new transfer station building. Obviously, through litigation and other issues, that process has taken us a much longer period. But if we go too long, we’re going to start to have some other issues. We have an aging compactor that’s going to need some extensive work in the near future. And if construction is going to be drawn out for a very long period of time, we might as well consider replacing the trailer. And yes, the transfer station will be down for potentially as much as a week during that change from a new trailer to replacing that existing trailer. So you’re saying that we might have to replace it before the job is done? If you’re going to draw construction out for over a year,

1:37:57 if you’re going to delay construction another year, I would consider changing the trailer at some point during the summer. If I’m going to keep it longer than a year, I have no idea about how you build a building and how long it’s going to take. So how long do you see that this is going to take? It’s going to depend on the process. And once we get through the traffic study, obviously, the architects will be able to develop a schedule and we’ll know exactly how long this is going to take us. And then that’s when we would make a decision about the trailer, I would hope. Correct. Not just the job, I would do it sooner than later. Correct. All right. But the replacing the trailer is not an easy thing as it has water, electricity, sewer, cable, it’s connected to the scale, all those things. Once you shut them down, the transfer station is shut down. But that’s, you know, we can be shut down for a week and allowed to operate, but that’s, you know, it would take some time. You also said there’s some costs like $10,000. I cannot say there’s cost of a $10,000 for the trailer. It’s $1,000. Just the trailer itself. And then we have to get costs for electrical crews to change over, for the mast and all that work. And, you know, a potential plumber, anything to disconnect the water, the sewer, the electricity, the cable, the scale and all that and put it back together.

1:39:32 So it’s a cost, but not $10,000. Yes. Okay. Thank you. There’s one more hand raised. We had moved on, but since your hand is raised, I will unmute you, Terry. Thank you very much. I just have a couple of things to say about what Helene just said. Your name? Helene, if you wouldn’t mind. Oh, I’m sorry. 113 Jersey Street, Terry Toro. Helene, would you mind telling me how many times you’ve been to the transfer station to check on the employees? Oh, I can’t begin to count it. No, that’s, I don’t think that’s true, Helene. I just want to say that you went up there the day after the meeting with pastry and coffee, because you were so sorry about the conditions up there. No one told you that they were satisfied with conditions. So I’m really kind of upset that you’ve been saying that twice. They’re not satisfied with the conditions. As a matter of fact, there’s another new odor in there, which they believe is decaying rats, and it started to come out on one of the warm days. So when the weather warms up, we’re going to, they’re going to be smelling those, that rat infestation again. Another thing was I called the trailer company, just to, just to get an idea of how long it would take. They told me that if it’s an existing trailer, where the water is already,

1:41:05 it’s already plumbed, the electricity is already hooked up, the scale has the hookup. All they literally have to do is take the scale, take one trailer off, put the other trailer on, and then do the hookups. And the enclosure around the bottom can be done while the transfer station’s open. So I don’t know where that estimate’s coming from a week. I admit, I don’t know exactly what it entails, but that is what the trailer company told me. And I think Andrew, you know, said it, that it was only going to be about $4,000 to replace the trailer. And I do appreciate the fact that Andrew is talking about replacing the trailer later on, if we find out that the project’s going to take a while. My other comment is that the conditions up there have been deteriorating for many years. So if we’re going to talk about everybody being concerned about the health and safety of the people that work there, I think we do need to take into consideration that no repairs were done, nothing was done until the union filed a grievance and the union called a press conference. And then things got done in short order. So I just wanted to make that point that I don’t know if, I know, I certainly know the Marblehead Municipal Employees Union does not trust the fact that the transfer station is being taken care of and that everyone’s looking out for the employees because until we brought it to your attention, nothing was done. And the employees had brought it to your attention in the past. So that’s all. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. So now, as there’s no more raised hands and

1:42:43 I’ve had quite a while of public comment, it’s time for us to make our decision. So Elaine Joanne, do we lose Elaine? I don’t see her. I think we need Elaine. Yeah, we need Elaine. Yes. Where’d she go?

1:43:23 There you are. There you are. He’s back. Hi, Elaine. Okay. Hey, Elaine. All right. Sorry, but you know what happened. I can’t even get power. All right. Let’s not, let’s not worry about that. Let’s just continue on. Okay. Okay. So the last part I was at when Ms. Who was… Well, we’re going to just discuss A or B. I think it’s time for us to take our vote. I apologize for that. I think something happened to my computer because it’s not even getting any power and it’s plugged in. All right. So all right. Let me relax a little bit. Let Joanne start. Okay. So I think I am prepared to make a motion to vote. May I make a motion to vote for either plan A or plan B? No. I’m sorry. Were you asking? I’m sorry. Go on. Oh. And look forward to the traffic study. And as we proceed, I’ll continue to evaluate the plan to make it the best plan B. Okay. So what’s your motion exactly? Motion to vote for plan A or plan B.

1:44:54 And with consideration that plan B is still… It would have to be either to vote for A, a motion to vote for A or a motion to vote for B. Yes. No, you have to make a motion for one or the other. Yes. You have to choose… I’m sorry. I misunderstood how to do that. Okay. So I would like to make a motion to vote for plan B with respect to it still having considerations to perfect it. And discussion, Helene, or a second? I’d like to make a second for discussion. And since I took up a lot of time, I’m not going to take up as much time as I might have if I… Because I think this is a very serious issue and I apologize for the glitch that I just had, but my computer totally died and I couldn’t even get any battery going. But I just want to say that I have lost sleep over this. I visited the traffic… I visited the transfer station. I’ve spoken to the employees. I’ve had numerous meetings with Andrew. We’ve talked at our boards. We’ve talked with the architects repeatedly. We’ve had open forums. We’ve had conversations with Jerry. And it’s been a decade of having other engineers make presentations.

1:46:25 And I feel that with the new news that I got this evening, that we all got this evening from Dana, that I feel comfortable moving forward. I know that this is going to work one way or another. And I’m satisfied that the plan is close enough with a… As soon as we vote on this, I will make a motion for a traffic study. And certainly I feel that any… anyone of us that are not satisfied with the traffic study will state that and we will continue with the study. But plan B is the only obvious plan, even if we had the $5 or $6 million, because plan A still had a problem, the internal problem of the crisscrossing and the stop signs and whatever else was going to be going on there was going to be a lot of congestion. And I don’t think that that would even be ideal. It would be less ideal for all those people coming in each day than the people that will be moving along on the roads to enter the transfer station. So with all of that, I am seconding the motion for B. And I believe that we already have a really good transfer station, probably one of the best in the

1:47:59 state if you think of all the communities that don’t even have anything like this. And I think it’s just going to get better. For me, the fact that we can afford plan B without having to having to ask for more money and the fact that plan A would require an override, which would be more than $6 million. It also seems like the fiscally responsible thing to go with B. We know and we’ve said repeatedly this meeting, approving B tonight would not be set in stone. We will get a traffic study, we will get plans, we will change things. We’ll talk to Dana, Jerry, Andrew. I really think that by voting for B tonight, I think that we will be able to flow into a much more positive plan than we even have now. And we will continue to listen to neighbors, we will continue to get experts in. But I think that pledging to go forward with B is the right thing to do. So on that, let’s have a pulled vote. I’ll miss Joanne Miller. In favor. Miss Elaine Haysley. In favor. Dr. Todd Belfbecker. In favor. Okay. And then, Helene, I think we need a motion so we can approve a traffic study. I move that we engage a professional to do a full traffic study of the options that we have,

1:49:34 we will be giving them. And they may even think of some other options of their own. So I don’t know whether I should add that or any and all options. Should I say that? I would just say to hire a traffic professional to do a traffic study is probably the best way to just keep it simple. I move to hire a professional to perform a traffic study. Hopefully it’ll be as soon as possible. Yes, I think as soon as possible is a good idea. A pulled vote, Andrew, please. Andrew, if we say as soon as possible, and we get one person that can do it sooner than the other, and if there are cost factors, we still have to take the lowest bidder. Or how does that work? No, it’s engineering services so we can request engineering services right away. And so we can get one that’s quite on the side. Yeah, obviously, we can talk to the consultant about their staffing concerns and how quickly we can have this done. Perfect. Okay. Okay. So the vote, please, Andrew. A pulled vote. Ms. Joanne Miller. In favor. Ms. Helene Hazlett. In favor. Dr. Todd Dolfbecker. In favor. And I do want to reiterate what’s been said many times is we still want to talk to the community and the neighborhood around the transfer station. We are not closing any doors,

1:51:08 but I really feel optimistic this is a good way to go and we’re going to have a great plan in the end. So Todd, the last piece of work that we need to do on this is that they are, we’re scheduled to have a warrant hearing on Monday, April 6th. On the board, I put forward two articles, Article 37 and 38. And with this vote, does the board want to indefinitely postpone those two articles? Absolutely. I would say so. So I need a vote from the board to indefinitely postpone Article 37 and Article 38. So those two separate votes? No, I think they can be done at once. Okay. I move to withdraw Article 37 and 38. Yeah, indefinitely postpone our school. Definitely postpone. Again, what’s the article again? 37 and 38. 37 and 38. Thank you. I second. Andrew. Ms. Joanne Miller. In favor. Ms. Helene Hazlitt. In favor. Dr. Todd Belfbecker. In favor, but it’s April 11th is the warrant hearing, not April 6th. That’s correct. April 11th. And we need to post that. Do we, are we, we’re going to, if we attend that meeting as a board, or as a quorum, we need to post that as a board of health meeting. That’s correct. Yep. We’ll have that posted. And do you know if it’s Zoom or if it’s in person?

1:52:39 I believe it’s in person. It’s probably a hybrid meeting at this point. Okay. So let’s, let’s post that as a meeting. We just have to call the order and then adjourn. That’s, that’s the agenda is the warrant warrant hearing. But if we call the order, if we call the order. Because we’ll, we’ll, we’ll have a quorum present. So we need to be official and post it as a meeting, even though we won’t. You don’t call it and adjourn right away. You mean call the order and adjourn at the end of the meeting. That’s correct. Correct. That’s what it was confusing. Yes. Since it’s so close to April Fool’s and still. No, no April Fool’s with town business. All right. Is there director, we still haven’t done your director’s report, Andrew. So. No, so just a couple items on director’s report. We had a very successful household hazardous waste event on March, the beginning of March. We had 79 residents sign up for that event. Our next event is June 8th. We will post that on the website shortly. Saturday, April 9th, starting at 12 PM. Spur has sponsored an Earth Day cleanup. So we will be, they will clean up. Devereaux Beach, Seaside Park, Lead Mills, Riverhead Beach, Scrapsy Beach, Gary Playground, and Preston Beach. So if you want to volunteer to help with spur, please contact spur directly. And just a notification to the residents that have a transfer station sticker. The shrink wrap dumpster for boat shrink wrap is back on site.

1:54:12 As you enter the facility, it’s on the right hand side. So please use that to recycle your shrink wrap. We have leaf and grass collection three weeks in the springtime. So they will occur the week of April 25th, the week of May 16th, and the week of June 6th. And that’s it. Thank you. We had public comment about the transfer station. Is there any more public comment about anything else that’s not related to the transfer station? Okay, there’s no raised hands. So we need a motion to adjourn. Our next, not including the warrant hearing, our next official board health meeting is May 10th, I believe. That is correct. May 10th, yes. So do we have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Second. Miss Helene Hazlet? In favor. Miss Joanne Miller? In favor. Dr. Todd Dolfbecker? In favor. Night, everybody. Thank you.