Board of Health: December 12, 2023

Transcript captured from MHTV’s Vimeo auto-captioning. No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

0:16 Uh, December 12th to order. Welcome everyone. Um, I think we get first, uh, item on our agenda is we’ve got some minutes. We’ve had Marty working real hard at the office while he’s been filling in, if the filling in, but working at the transfer station and filling in. So, um, thank you Marty for that. And, um, let me see, uh, first minutes, uh, the September 19th, pretty, um, extensive. Has everybody had a chance to read them? Yes. Um, I’m looking for a motion to accept the minutes of September 19th. I make a motion to accept the minutes from September 19th.

1:02 Second, I’ll second. Um, all in favor? In favor, unanimous that,

1:12 um, I think, I think I had a question on after I got, I apologize. Um, lemme see if that, no, it’s gonna change. You have, I think you had it. Yep. He updated it. I checked what one was that? ‘cause Oh, it’s a motion I made on, uh, later on in it. So it’s, uh, he added it. I know, but I’d like to know which one. And you said probably didn’t see it under five below Andrew Motion. Yep. Okay. And this is what you, you wanted it to say? Yep, that’s fine. Have larger trucks allowed at the transfer station? Mm-Hmm. Okay. And I also, um, edited, uh, under four about, when we were talking about the, um, five member board that Chairman Hasler suggested the board consider the Board

1:59 of Health going to a five member board and began the discussion to increase the members. And the rest is ch And, um, Joanne seconded because it was passed. So I’m looking for motion for, uh, October 10th. I’ll make a motion to accept the minutes of October 10th. Second. All in favor? In favor, unanimous. And, uh, that, um, also, um, now we’ve got the, um, on November 14th, and I did look at these. I, I see that, uh, Dr. Zaro was here. And what I neglected to see is that we didn’t have, uh, this, uh, little bio, not little bio, the little bio

2:45 that I gave of a very large bio. So, um, I would like some of that to be Yep. Put in pertinent details. And maybe we’ll put that, I can either say, uh, accept it as corrected, or do you wanna put a hold on that? I think if, if, if that can be added, I can do that. Mm-Hmm. Okay. And also, um, there’s a typo. Yep. Um, I word adjourn. I, I think your mind, ah, yes, I see. Yes. Fingers. So, um, if we get those, we don’t have to see them again, but just, okay. Gotcha. So, I’d like to motion November 14th as corrected with the Dr. Zaro. Happy to make a motion to accept

3:31 as corrected if those corrections for the minutes of November 14th. I second. All in favor? Favor. That was very nice. Thank you very much everybody. Um, we have, uh, the counseling center on their annual visit. You can come more than annually too. So if Ron wants to come up, this table looks awfully long. You, you wanna sit? We can’t see, uh, Ruth though, if you don’t see very, you can’t see Mary or Not. He sees me enough.

4:04 Never enough. Never enough. Ruth Ferguson, uh, on, uh, zoom, uh, and Ron Greg, president Ruth Ferguson and Ron Vice President. Is that your title or? Mm-Hmm. Okay. I thought so. So, um, you’re gonna give us an update? Um, you’re gonna begin. Uh, Yes. Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, thank you all for inviting us in to talk about the counseling center. I apologize for not being able to be there, but I had my first, uh, bout with Covid right after Thanksgiving, and, uh, did the paxlovid and then had a rebound. So I am still testing positive as far as I know. Um, so I’m glad we still have hybrid meetings.

4:52 So thank you again for inviting us in. Uh, we’re grateful for the continual support from the town, the select board, and the Board of Health for over five decades. The recent passing of Jack Welner reminded us of how deep the roots of our work are. In the 1960s, he was a leader in recognizing the mental health needs of our fellow marble headers. And his support for the center remains strong for the 55 years. Since our founding, we’ve been extremely for fortunate to have many individuals and organizations who have provided that same kind of support to us speaking for the board of directors. We are very proud of the work of the center over the last nine months, which I believe is the last time we were in actually, um,

5:38 hiring a new key, hiring new key staff, making important improvements to our administrative in infrastructure through software and equipment upgrades, and initiating important improvements to the Hobbs Building, which Ron will discuss in more detail shortly. We have a truly enthusiastic team of seasoned staff and new members of the team at all levels. We thank the town and you here for providing the ARPA funds that allowed much of this to happen. However, we all know that the challenges in the post pandemic world, particularly concerning the mental health of our citizens are significant. Our clinical staff reports that issues are more complex and require multiple layers of treatment across all age groups.

6:23 Though the needs among our younger population are stark. The youth come to us with issues around socialization and school sexual identity issues with their parents. Frequently, their coping me mechanisms include cutting suicidal thoughts, and many have required multiple hospitalizations. There are many layers to the trauma, which means they need to be in treatment much longer than in the past.

6:52 The elderly is probably the next largest cohort with serious challenges and issues that we’ve seen increase over the last two years. The town funding is one important part in the formula that keeps the center operating. We provide the services spelled out in our contract and cover the cost of those services through the town appropriation supplemented by the generosity of many important collaborators. For example, the Female Humane Society funds our social services case manager’s salary and provides funding to support emergency financial assistance. When people need to pay utility bills or their food stamps have run out. We have, uh, ways of providing them funds thanks

7:38 to the Female Humane Society. Making ends meet also supports our social service work to a large extent. And I wanna particularly recognize the old North Church and St. Michael’s who have each of which have been very generous to us this year. Um, like everywhere, operating costs and other expenses have increased dramatically. Uh, we are anticipating savings on our heating expenses thanks to the no boiler, which we appreciate and thank you ARPA funds. Though the windows are in such serious disrepair that we’re still not, uh, particularly efficient with our, with our heating. But, uh, we’ll be talking about that later. And over the course of the,

8:24 the next several months, I assume. Additionally, the salary expectations of applicants for our open positions are extremely high, making it more difficult than ever to recruit clinicians. We’ve been meeting the challenge by upping our game in fundraising this spring. We received a three year hundred, $120,000 grant from Cummings Foundation, followed this summer by a $25,000 appropriation in the state budget due to the efforts of Rep Armini. This is evidence of the recognition that our work is essential. In the past two months, we had our best golf event ever. MCC is so grateful to the select board for granting us this day. And we had our second annual Gary Five event,

9:10 which raised significantly, significantly more than last year. A very special thanks to everyone at the Gary Five and to Tom McMahon for his donation of Bruins tickets, which everybody wanted to win. Helene and Jim Haslett for the gift certificate to Sea Salt Restaurant and Joanne Miller for supporting us that night. And December is when we launched the friends campaign. So funds from the Gary five golf and friends are flexible and can be applied wherever there is a shortfall. The Cummings and state funding is project specific.

9:48 We continue to serve about 500 clients providing over 6,000 hours of therapy. Our current waiting list, however, is 321, uh, dating back to people who have reached out to us as far back as 2022. Um, some of whom we hope have found other avenues

10:14 for 124 individuals are from Marblehead. Could you Repeat that? Can everyone hear me okay? Just, just After the 320 12 wait list, we missed a little bit. Okay. My mess. My computer just said my internet was unstable. I have everything closed that I possibly can Anyway. Um, so the wait list is 3 21. It goes back to 2022. And some people may have dropped off and haven’t, you know, have found other resources and haven’t contacted us to take their name off the list. 124 of that 3 21 or 39% are from Marblehead. Um, as you, as you all know, uh, anyone who contacts us from Marblehead takes priority.

11:01 Um, so we try to keep the, the waiting list people from Marblehead off the waiting list whenever possible. Um, every day, Marie Willette, our clinical director, goes through the list and the new intake forms that come in every day through the list and the new intake forms that come in every day to see if there are appropriate candidates to fill any openings that arise. We often have, especially when it gets to be around school, vacation time or other holidays, we have folks who cancel their appointments and Marie scans the list to see if there is someone that can come in, at least for an initial, uh, interview. So she, she does that on a daily basis.

11:50 I mentioned that we’ve made and, and are continuing to make significant improvements, improvements to our office space and the Hobbs property. Uh, I’ll let Ron update you on all that, Ron. So on January 2nd, we hope to go up to bid for the first floor renovation of the Hobbs building. We’ve gotten wonderful cooperation, uh, from Becky. Uh, cutting. Um, we had a design plan, uh, formulated by Craig Bosworth, a local architect and no cost. Um, we’ll go out January 2nd to bid. We’ll give the bid process a couple of weeks,

12:37 then we’ll evaluate the bids. It is a town owned building. So we did this in cooperation with the town and plan to follow Chapter 30 B accordingly.

12:50 That renovation, although a small project, which we estimate to be in the vicinity of 40 to 50,000 using ARPA funds, again, that the town made available, will allow us to dedicate a second and the third floor to strictly therapy space except for one office on the first floor for handicap accessible or mobile mobilely challenged people. Um, and so we’ll bring our administrative offices all downstairs and that allows for our business manager to supervise and to run the place on that, on that floor. So we’ll be segmenting that off,

13:36 we hope come springtime when the project is completed, it should be completed sooner than springtime, but we’re hoping it’s part of maybe the, our 55th year in business that, uh, we could have an open houses park, maybe about 55th celebration, and, uh, people will see in a designated reception area, designated offices for people who process claims, the business manager for all our IT equipment, et cetera.

14:13 So we’ve been very, um, lucky that we can do this and I can assure you staff’s excited about seeing this change. The other stuff that’s happened from a facility’s point of view is that we’ve, uh, with the help of Amy McHugh and we got our parking lot renovation renovated to include proper signage. Um, and that was really big because they were developing some issues where people were beginning to use that not as a one way coming in from, um, Clifton, but they were coming from the EIT school with all the young kids that are on the play field.

14:58 It was, you know, you could picture little kids coming off. There’s a break in the gate in our parking lot or in the town’s parking lot and Hoss building. Little kids are coming out and cars are coming this way now and coming that way. It was, and it was our staff who brought, frankly this to the attention of the town and Amy ue Chief King, uh, work together that we’re fabulous to work with. We hope to also be doing something on the outside of the building. I think it’s important to remember, again, it’s a town owned building. We pay for those renovations. The town does not inside and outside the town will meet, will do

15:47 for fire safety and handicap. But a lot of the innards of this building, which is quite dated as you know, if the town doesn’t come forward like it did with the furnace or like it did with a new roof, that’s our dime. If we spend money on that, we’re not spending it that we raise or get through ARPA or state aid or whatever, then we’re dipping into our fundraising to upgrade the town’s building in certain ways. Don’t get me wrong. We’re thrilled to be there and to have it, but it’s just another challenge. And why 60,000 if you’re trying to do client services and building stuff,

16:32 unless you get an influx of outside funding is another challenge. And I just want to take a second to,

16:43 ‘cause I can’t help myself. We have a marvelous chair in Ferguson. This person has got Covid, she got rebounded. She just prepared for you one of the most excellent summaries. It’s on the quality of what we hear at the board and it’s why this board votes her president. We’re very fortunate to have her. So now that I’ve done my kiss up, I should pass the baton back.

17:11 Well, Ron, uh, thank you so much. And, uh, a lot of what I’ve been able to do I couldn’t have done without you. And that’s, this is getting a little sappy, but it is true. We have a great board. Uh, a lot of enthusiasm. Some members have been on for a long, long time. Some members were on earlier and came back and some are brand new and we’re working on a regular basis if people are interested. We still have openings on the board. People wanna help us help with this really meaningful, important work. We’d love to hear from you. And my last pitch is, if you’re not doing so already, follow us on Facebook and Instagram. We’re pretty easy to find.

17:56 Uh, we’re lucky that we have folks like Jack Ridge who, uh, repost a lot of our, uh, a lot of what we put up. But we, uh, we like to keep you informed about what’s going on and just, um, hear from everybody what they think. So I’m happy to answer Madam Chair. I’m happy to answer any questions you or the other board members have. Well, I’d like to open up to the table. I always have questions, so I’ll let wait till, uh, my colleagues have to say. Just a quick one last time, um, when you talked, you spoke about, uh, the percentage that was adolescents on your wait list. Do, do you know what that is now or rough estimate?

18:41 Um, I honestly don’t know. I can get, uh, oh, I didn’t know Jack Ridge was on this zoom when I said that, but thank you Jack. Um, I, uh, I can get that to you. I think it’s, uh, if anything it’s did you ask on the wait list or are, or that are being served on The wait list? On the wait list? Yeah. Uh, I don’t know the, uh, exact number. I know that we try very hard to get, uh, usually when young people come to us, it’s a level of, uh, seriousness that we do whatever we can to help them or to find them another, another resource. What we can tell you for sure is that it’s on the increase that there’s no doubt in terms of what the numbers we used

19:30 to see of adolescents in prior years to now. That’s, I think last year was like 70% or something. It was high. So yeah, I, you know, again, we’d have to, I’m mean myself a note to make sure that we get back to you on that. Okay. Yeah. Ruth has my email and you can mark me down for another pair of tickets next year. As long as I have. You can have a pair. Do you have buddies that Patriot tickets? The basket? I’m working on it. Trust me. I was bugging them. So maybe not Patriots. You want Patriot? I I’m having trouble giving teachers tickets over. Um, I I have a question about the conversation that we’ve had over the past several years has been not

20:15 so very long ago. The town through the Board of Health was, uh, marking $120,000 to the counseling center. And I believe it was five years ago, longer, longer, 10 years ago that it went down to 60,000. And I just really wanna continue to have the conversation. This is a resource that is truly unique. It’s a valued, um, resource that we already have lots of communities scramble to try and figure out how to build something like this in their community when, especially when the Delta is so enormous that the need far outweighs the, the, uh,

21:01 the resources that are there. And I just think as a board we should continue to have conversations. How can we get back? How can we get back to where we were 10 years ago? Um, and I think that that conversation is, is really valuable. I know the town is in a situation where funding is, is really tight, but, um, I think this is a priority. We’ve been discussing this for the past three years, but since I’ve sat on the board And The need hasn’t diminished, I’m really, uh, I struggle to imagine that there’s 321 PA individuals still waiting on this list for care. And I know that at one point last year there was 400 people on the wait list. So that’s significant. And I know there’ve been enormous strides in working to meet the need,

21:49 bringing in staff and finding ways to use the people that are there and the technologies to meet the need. Um, so I guess as a board, how can we get back to where we were a long time ago? What does that take? What did that involve? And I Just, well, well, I can just say what we all know is that our budget is so tight, like you just said. Um, we, we need to, um, take care of our office and our, our, the health department, we’d love to give them 120. We, it was a really a, a sad day when we had to cut it and we’ve never been able to get back. Um, and, and here the need is so much greater.

22:34 But I always go back to, you know, why are we, why are we serving other communities? Maybe we should now bring it just back to, to Marblehead. And that’s what it was when we had 120,000, um, a hundred, yeah, 120,000 because, um, even at that time we didn’t even have third party payment. And we a fortunate enough that we we’re able to get that, um, because of the, the credibility that our staff has, the credits and the, so your staff, I call it our staff because, you know, I’m invested in the, in the counseling center, um, emotionally invested. Um, also from what I recall, the

23:23 monies that they, that the town gave or the board of through the Board of Health were for town employees. It really wasn’t to cover other people that walk in. So I originally, it’s It’s town employees and residents of the town that can’t, that have, Um, difficulty Financial need. Yes, it is strictly segregated to Marblehead residents. Alright. So, um, thank you for that correction. But I know that the, if a town employee needs assistance, they get it. Yes. Do you? Absolutely. Do you see them? Without a doubt at I hope they’re not on the waiting list, But no, they’re not. No. They would not be. We’re we have a contract with you, right.

24:10 Uh, with Board of Health and the town and if there was an indication of that it should be raised. We have none staff’s very clear that that’s a priority. Good. I’d also like to add, um, that really, I think we came to you with a pretty high figure lives here. That was Marblehead residents. That, that, that, uh, and town employees or Marblehead residents. That’s very true. I think one of the things you have to remember also, Elaine, is pre pandemic. Um, you know, the 120,000, you know, was quite an adjustment for the center to make Of course. So all of a sudden half of what you’re getting, you know,

24:55 and then you have people at you’re door who are not, you’re still being prioritized. You can’t turn people away. It would make the town, you know, it could cause some litigious behavior or activity. So we are, we are are doing everything we can to make sure we serve town people. But I honestly have to say by Kim Madam Chair, that

25:23 that, you know, when you, Joanna is right, we need to begin to think of how you can restore. And while I, we understand that the town is in a pinch, you know, what is the plan to begin to maybe on a small scale phase it in? Or are there other sources of funds that come to the town that might be appropriate? For example, many of our clients have underlying issues. It’s not just that they have one mental health issue. Many mental health diagnosis are dual diagnosis, a mental health piece or an underlying addiction piece.

26:13 So, you know, it’s important that if all sorts of funds come to the town, that’s just one example. I only bring that up because it came to my attention. The town swamps got a sizable amount of opioid money recently from the state, perhaps as part of the class action suit with, um, I’m forgetting the name of the firm. LER family. Oh, LER Family. Or maybe it was a separate opioid thing. I, I don’t know. I’m not exactly sure. But the town gave that to the Board of Health to distribute and, um, as they see fit, and I guess they, they’re doing some sort of process to determine what the priorities are.

27:01 I don’t know, I don’t know if the town, for example, a Marblehead is or is not getting any of that. But here you have us as the major mental health provider under contract with the town. We can easily say without, um, any, uh, doubt that many of our clients have either. Addiction is primary but largely underlying. So we service these people. We have eight to, uh, 10 people who are at any time they’re licensed to do all sorts of therapy related to addiction, related to mental health. We’re a primary facility for that. Um, you know, we don’t know

27:47 because we haven’t been able to bring in those 125 people or 24 from the waiting list because we have to do intake. But I’ll bet you done to donuts that some of those people have underlying issues and you know, so, and there may be other ways. This is why we go to the state, uh, with senator, uh, arm meeting. We were just wonderful. So we, we, we try to really go everywhere as we can to get money. The last thing I wanna say is when you get, I guess I said that before, so maybe this is the last thing, is that when, when you’re a not-for-profit and you exist, you have $60,000, there are 20,000 people

28:34 in the town of Marblehead. We get 60,000. Many people are insured and we do get reimbursed through that. But we’re also being asked to prioritize people who sometimes are on a sliding scale. We have to fundraise like crazy. And then the external funds that we may get through a grant or through have restrictions on them. So we’re constantly trying to okay, this pot for this because we wanna stay, uh, straight with the auditors at the end of the year. Something I really appreciate. So we have multiple challenges. We have a mental health crisis, we have multiple sources

29:20 of funding with restrictions. We had the town literally cut, you know, it was some time ago. But we’ve been operating over a decade now under the same six 60 k allotment. If you don’t think that our costs have increased just to keep the building up and do those things. ‘cause we pay for the utilities, the town does not do that. Or electricity or phone or it or whatever. So in look, um, the town has been wonderful to us. Absolutely marvelous and we appreciate that. But I welcome Ms.

30:05 Miller’s comment that, uh, the board stay vigilant about any funds that come to the town where maybe that’s a way to make up for the 60 k in whatever way they can. That’s all. We all feel that way. Good. And uh, it, I was there when we had to cut it. In fact, I was also there. I recall that the, the school department was giving money. I don’t even know if there’s in their budget anymore to get, they used to pay for Harry Garrett. That was, I mean, that was decades ago. I mean, but Not now. No. So, and people, you and I are the only ones that even know those names, but, um, I, I think that, uh, we, you are a tremendous service to the community as well

30:51 as we are a service to you. Because without you, we would have 321 plus people in need. And, um, we, we just are very grateful to the counseling center. I wanted to ask you a question because you touched upon something that I’m more aware of. Are you having any groups now? Uh, like the women’s group, because that was a very big thing at one time. Um, and the groups, you, you can see, you know, a group of people and they, they’re being serviced and they help each other. It’s a helping kind of, uh, thing. Ruth, are you doing any group work? I on you? Uh, when we don’t have any groups right now, uh, we, we know that there is, uh, that there’s a lot

31:41 of interest out there and, and we’re trying to figure out how to make it work. We sometimes have, I guess in the past there may be some issues with some groups ‘cause it is, it is such a local organization, but, and people feel a little less, uh, anonymous when they’re in something like that. But, um, we know that there is, there seems to be a lot of interest in having, having groups. And um, one of the things that will happen when we, when the stove is removed, Helene, is we’ll have a, we’ll have a space in what was formerly the kitchen, uh, to have, have group sessions. Well, if you throw it out the window, I’ll plant flowers in it. Well, that’s,

32:29 It’s been declared. I forgot to mention that’s the next thing. It’s been declared surplus with the help of the Thatcher. It’s been declared surplus ‘cause it’s town owned property. And once we can get that through that process, get that baby out of there, then we will have a nice space to run. We don’t need something to, you can’t do groups without space. You don’t need the seven or eight guys to take that Out easy. Probably a cast iron Thinks someone’s gonna have to come in. Who wants a lot of, uh, old cast iron apparently. Um, I just wanted to cycle back if I could. I Think cookies in that, I, I know you told me we were all at the select we’re getting together.

33:14 I don’t think that’s anymore. They did shut off the gas to it when they put in the new boiler. Um, I did wanna, uh, just say in response to your comment about, um, exclusively serving Marblehead, I, you, uh, obviously know way more about the history of the center than I ever will. But, um, I believe part of the reason for some of the changes was that the, um, financial viability of limiting the services, it it in that way, uh, made it impossible to continue that there, there needed to be a new approach. And, um, and as Ron said, last year,

34:03 we reported that 80% of our, of our clients were Marblehead residents. I’m confident it’s still, it’s still that number and, um, with the, uh, with the addition of the, the social worker Lisa, um, in addition to Terry doing as much as she does, we, we do a lot of social service work. So, um, I think we try to do as much as we can for the town. I, I think, um, I had the opportunity to do an article for the current on the counseling center, the history of the counseling center because it is such a rich resource. And the conversations I had with Paul Crosby were so enlightening. The things that he spoke about that really were heartwarming

34:50 and earning a very emotional response were about the social services that the counseling center manages for their clients. Because mental health isn’t, challenges with mental, mental health aren’t in a vacuum. They’re often due to the person’s lived experience and some of the challenges that they face every day and they maybe generationally have faced. So I was really, um, deeply touched to hear so many stories about the social, uh, services that are engaged through this resource in our community because, you know, we have these wonderful counselors that go in to do this work and then are working with clinic clients every day

35:36 to help them manage their illness. But there’s also a team of people at the counseling center that are trying to find areas to help support them and pull them forward into, um, their, getting them the resources that they need to compliment their restored mental health. Because if you, you know, are, are your men, your depression’s going down, but you’re still feeling food insecurity and you can’t feed your family healthy, nutritious foods, um, where do you end up back probably with a lot of depression and anxiety? And I think therefore the conversation about funding the counseling Center just needs to be continued and explored. How can we help this resource because we don’t have like a Marblehead social Services

36:22 department and this is a community in the town. There’s people that know how to get help for people that need help. And when we talk about, um, the patients that have a dual diagnosis of substance use, substance abuse addiction, when you have those problems and you’re trying to engage healthcare, mental healthcare, um, you know, you can get to the bottom of the list and these are urgent problems that families face. And, uh, we’ve got clinicians at the counseling center who are able to meet those needs. So I think given that we do have some resources here in town from our governor, former ag who was able to get our town, uh,

37:08 I think a very nice, um, settlement, I think we should continue to have that conversation. And I know there’s a lot of enthusiasm on this board and in Our department to do. So you’re very fortunate to have met Paul Crosby because he’s a wonderful man and I’m sure they’re excellent, excellent people there. Now I hear them rating about them, about all the employees, but, um, it, it’s a vicious circle, uh, that it’s not just food, it’s heat, it’s a roof over their head and people are, uh, have had, uh, job loss. Um, it’s, it, if if they’re healthy and if their kids unhealthy, you know what that’s like, you know, when your kid has a common cold,

37:53 everybody gets upset. So you can imagine what it’s like if somebody has a real issue. But I just wanna thank you and tell you how much we appreciate Counseling Center and the town of Marblehead is extremely fortunate to have a counseling center and to have what we have and we’re doing the best we can with what the budget that we have. Believe me, I would love you to have $220,000 and it’s great that, um, that you are getting some of these stipends from C*****g Center. They’re so generous. But I that’s restricted, is that correct you said? Right. It’s for particular, uh, helping us get more clinicians,

38:40 but uh, yeah, it can’t be, it can’t be used for other, other purposes. And the Humane Society, they’re wonderful. And I know they’re amazing. You can, you can call upon them, you know, if there’s a special issue. Same with making ends meet. They’ve get, they’ll, they’ll step up. So. Right. Uh, I just wanna address something when Ron was talking about, um, so Ron I have, and I can, I can make no promises. This is new to me. So, um, I talk a lot about, you know, the communities I, I build for myself in like physical fitness and gyms and stuff like that. I work out a gym and Lynn, I’ve told them about the, the people that I talk to there and they are trying to put me in contact with grants from the state specifically for mental health.

39:28 And I, that’s why I’d say also it’s not good a good idea to say let’s cut off other towns specifically because these guys that are helping me, I do live in Lynn and Swamp Scott. And if I was like, yeah, thanks for the help, now you guys can’t be a part of this, we might turn them off. So, but I am talking to them, it’s a new world to me done doing that. But they are very connected to the state reps and state senators and stuff like that. One of them’s neighbors were born and um, so they’re trying to put me in touch with that. So I am working on that from a different tree. Um, and then two more things. We did get some settlement money. I don’t know much about it. Um, I have asked Andrew about it. I know, I don’t think it’s as much as Swamp Scott got correct, per capital. Yeah. We have received some settlement money. Um, I was trying to reach the chief, uh, CFO to get the exact amount Mm-Hmm.

40:15 Um, but it was not a large settlement. We are signed on to additional settlements. Um, so we are awaiting those and we could see some additional money. Um, but I believe that the first settlement was only enough to do outreach work to essentially opioid overdoses and stuff like that. Right. Um, yeah, I just, I didn’t know what it was right now, but, and then also I don’t know enough about this and I, you know, fortunately we have Alan and Jim here who probably know exactly about to are they, can you do, and I’m all for separating things when they come to town because it’s a hell of a lot easier to pass things. Especially when you say kids are involved. Um, are you allowed to do a general override that’s separate from the town override? Like if they were to apply for a general override strictly

41:03 for mental health, is that something that’s possible? Yes. So you could do it a single article for mental health that would require an override, you know, for, and You would say, and it wouldn’t get mixed up with it Wouldn’t be A general general, but it wouldn’t get into, it would be a Single article for that. Okay. Have you ever thought about something like that? No. And I’ll tell you why. Okay. It would be a direct conflict of interest. Okay. In my opinion, we are your sub, we, we are a subcontractor of the town. Mm-Hmm. And I think it’s rather bold

41:41 and provides, uh, all sorts of tentacles above the contract of interest. Yeah. You know, for us to go up there and say, but I will say nothing would prevent the Board of health Correct. From doing that. That’s what I was gonna say. No. That that’s, it is a policy. You know, I don’t, you don’t speak for the board here, but Yeah. You’re the policymakers here and you know, that’s in your hands. I, I, you know, can’t comment on that. But for us, I, and I think the chair would agree, Yes, yes, I do May be inappropriate. Oh no. And I appreciate your honesty on that and that not wanting to have that. No, but good, good to know. ‘cause I didn’t know about that, so, So if there’s no other comments

42:27 or questions, I, I thank you again. Thank you all. Peter, I thank you for coming. I thank you for caring of the community and I feel better. Oh, thank you. Get better, Rudy. Take care everybody. He He needs you. I’ll be hanah. Yeah. Get well quick. Okay. I’m Brian. Thanks. So are you ready to move along to the I’m tracking mental health. Mental health task Force? Yes. Thank you. Um, so I’m gonna, I can’t really see my notes, so I’m gonna try and reflect on our meeting, which was just, uh, like it was, let’s say on November 13th and at our November 13th meeting, uh, we welcomed our new select board member, Brett Murray, who has joined the mental health task force.

43:12 And we are aiming to engage with the schools and hope to partner to meet, um, areas of need that have been revealed through the, uh, youth risk survey. So we are continuing to, uh, submit content to the Marblehead current. Last month we focused on the mental health benefits of gratitude, and this month we focused on how to support your mental health through the holidays, which can be challenging for, for lots of folks. Um, we’ve been exploring the town needs assessment and we actually had, I know I had mentioned this last time, we reached out to the University of Massachusetts Boston to investigate getting a community risk survey to understand and uncover across the different demographics

43:58 what the areas of concern are. Um, we, we were a little shy by the cost of this assessment. It was $35,000. Um, and we really, in our discussing discussion, we had a very robust conversation about, well, this would be great information to have. And I know that, um, Lisa and Sharon from the Council on Aging had been very interested in this for a long time. And councils on aging and our neighboring communities on the North Shore have done this survey. Um, and our question to them, and what we’re investigating is once you have this data and uncover areas of need, what resources can you apply to them? So you find there’s a problem, what can you do to address the problem? So if you don’t have the resource to address the problem, it sounds like it may not be so valuable

44:45 to go digging into the problem so much. So it’s something we’re exploring and continuing to evaluate. But in the meantime, we do have the youth risk assessment at the high school and we are aiming to put our programming into meeting those needs. Um, specifically we went, some of us from the mental health task force went to Lin where there’s healthy Lin Fields, um, which is a big, they have a bolus of money that they use to do programming in their town for their youth and to prevent for prevention strategies. And they had a program called Screen ages, C-R-E-E-N ages. And it was about how the kids looking at their device and all the access they have to different information,

45:30 disinformation, uh, social pressures that they’re looking at all day long and how that can really, um, impact our youth negatively. And the program was like an hour and 15 minutes, I believe. And, uh, it was done by the medical community. They did a deep dive and put together a film where you got to know and follow some kids that were going through this experience. And it also, um, provided some insights into some strategies parents and families can have to try and minimize some of those effects. So at our next meeting, um, we’re gonna discuss this programming. It’s pretty expensive investment. I think it’s 700 for one of the films and then 400 for the other two films, um, in this series. But we’re gonna get more feedback from the team in Linfield

46:18 to understand they had a hard time getting people out for this as well. So the question is, how do you get people to show up to learn? Um, so it’s Linfield not Lynn. Yes. Linfield. Right. And did you visit Lynn also, or you visited Oh, did I say it was just Linfield. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. But, um, and it’s something that’s nationally done and does seem to have a lot of positive, uh, outcomes from people that participate in it. Um, so also there’s a new, uh, attended the, um, program for the Marblehead Female Humane Society, their providers meeting. And at that meeting, uh, Brian from the, the executive director at YMCA was remarking, they have a new director of mental health wellness

47:04 and hoping to have a partnership with, um, that individual at the YMCA. And, um, would he be a good person to sit on your, on your board? I think very well may be because certainly, you know, a new member of the community that’s got a lot of resources and a whole, you know, institution of the YMCA, they’re really building out their mental health wellness for their, um, organization. And so I think it’ll be really helpful, right. And help provide direction and maybe a great partnership. Um, let’s see. I’m sorry. I really can’t, I don’t, I’m more blind every day. But we, we were also really happy to have a young member of our community who graduated from Marvel Head Public schools, who studying mental health counseling at Salem University and is interested in engaging

47:51 with the mental health task force. So we’re very excited to welcome Emma Wiley. She we’re hoping that she can help lend a perspective from a younger, you know, vantage point to the organization. And our next meeting is, um, January 8th, and there have been some more people reaching out. So we are welcoming community members that are interested in supporting and engaging. Uh, we have, you know, a voting membership and also very grateful to have other members of the community that are interested in supporting in any way that they would like To. So where is your meeting held? It’s here in the Mary Alley building, and we also have a Zoom link that will be posted on the town website. You’re interested, I thought that People might, might mind tell you. Thank you. Yes. So the meeting will be here. It’s at seven Monday.

48:40 Thank you for again, a very full report. Thank you. I know I need to, any questions? No, no.

48:47 Any additions, Andrew or anything?

48:52 A wonderful job and thank you for doing, for, for leading the group. I know it’s an extra, uh, an extra chore on this, uh, on this, uh, board. I’m sure it’s not a chore because you’re, you’re enjoying it and you’re helping and, um, but it is, it does take time to run a meeting and to plan for it, and it’s a report on it. So Thank you Elaine. So I, I appreciate it. We all appreciate it. Andrew, you’re going to be ready for the transfer report? Sure. Uh, happy to report to the trailer. Uh, the scale house trailer has been replaced. That’s fully operational. Um, we need to do some minor work around utilities coming into the trailer, um, just to make sure that they don’t feast during the winter. So that’s just the water and sewer line.

49:37 Um, but that has heat wrapped tape around it currently. Um, we like, we just want insulate that area to make sure, uh, we don’t run into any issues. Um, we have heard back from the deep mass, DEP. Um, I have a few questions for the architects and for the engineers. Um, as long as our architect and engineers are, um, quick to respond, DEP has promised that we will see permits by the end of the year, uh, which is great news. Just some minor comments, uh, looking for some narratives on some aspects of the project. Um, but very minor things. So the architects and the engineers should respond pretty quickly. Um, and we should, you know, like I said, have that, uh, back to us pretty quick. Um, Can I ask you one thing? Was, is the staff happy with the trailer?

50:22 I mean, it’s a, you know, it’s a very nice trailer and so, so it’s tall. It’s a little bit bigger than it we had anticipated. So the original trailer was eight by 32. Um, we ended up with a, uh, 10 by 36. Uh, and yes, it’s considerably taller. Um, you know, I want to say it’s sitting off the ground, another foot higher than the last one. So, you know, there’s some differences and stuff like that. Um, but it’s clean, it’s dry, it’s warm. Um, it would be cool if we had to keep, you know, um, so o obviously, you know, it, it’s temporary in nature, but it, it, it definitely is, you know, great for the winter and stuff like that. Um, you know, we made some changes on the inside. We’ve added a closet to store some items. Um, there’s a, you know,

51:08 obviously they have their mini fridge back in there. The bathroom is not quite twice the size of the old ones, so that’s a nice improvement. Um, so there’s definitely some nice improvements to it. So, um, it’s definitely a good change. Um, obviously, you know, we continue on with the, the architects and the engineers. Um, we’re waiting on an estimate coming back from, from the architects and from, you know, they pushed it out to a third party, uh, to get estimates. So we’re waiting on those currently. Um, but we’re looking to have this project out to begin at out to bid at the beginning of the year. Great. So how long would that bid process take? Uh, the bid process is I is at least a month. You want to give, you know, people plenty of time to review the plans, ask questions.

51:53 You don’t wanna rush the bid where you’re, you know, people are throwing numbers at a project to just to get stuff in. Um, and we wanna make sure that we, you know, give them plenty of time to go over thing. Obviously it’s not a huge project, but we still want to give them ample time. Um, obviously, you know, I cleats winter so that you would give them ample time to review it, generally freezing, stuff like that. Um, right now we’re still having really good weather. Um, so it’s one of those things we might get lucky. We might be able to do some construction earlier than we anticipated, but again, you know, winter’s not over by any means. Mm-Hmm. So we’ll see what happens. Um, as far as other transportation updates, I know Tom wanted to talk about town meetings

52:38 a little bit. Yeah. Um, one thing I wanted to ask though too, Andrew, I know that when municipalities go out for bid, it tends to be one big round number, not broken down into anything, but we can get them afterwards to kind of divide out the phases and what the estimated costs are for each one. Right. So For like guess, so you can do it several different ways. Yeah. So you could do everything as one giant number, right? You could ask them, you could do it as multiple breakouts. So you could say, I want the scale house, I want, I want a number for the scale house, I want a number for the swap shed. I want a number for, um, every little piece of it and stuff like that. And that way you can have a better understanding. That’s, and then depending on budget, you can say, all right, I can go with X, Y, and z, I can’t go with this one. We don’t have the funding. So yeah, we can have this.

53:26 That’s the way I think to, to go correct. In order to make more transparent accounting, which I can, you know, I can, I’m happy to assist with, but the more you have the estimates broken down, the better then you can show like reasons why things went over in specific areas and it’s much more Yep. So you know exactly what you’re paying for the swap, you know exactly what you’re paying for the scale house and items like that. Yeah, Exactly. Um, so yeah, we can definitely talk about that and I can definitely express your, you know, your desire with the architects and stuff like that. Yeah. Okay. Um, obviously because we have such a tight budget Yep. There is gonna be the need to do some of that so we can continue on with the project to say, all right, I need to cut this piece out. Mm-Hmm. Um, you know, we’ll have to come back or let’s do part, let’s do the foundation of that. Right. But we can come back, you know? Yeah.

54:12 That, that’s something that we’re gonna have some discussions on in January. Okay. Um, you know, obviously we need to, need to keep this project moving. Yeah. And, uh, town meeting, uh, all I really had to say was I’m, I’m gonna be working on a statement on, you know, the question around town, about what happened to the money and, uh, so I know it’s a sensitive one, so I will go over with, uh, people in the know, in, in town and then have Lisa Mead and her organization check it to make sure that we’re not in breach of anything. Um, but that, you know, in order to move forward with anything, I think something like that is absolutely needed because it just gets said over and over again. Well, it is being said over and over again. It was a, there was a prepared statement at last year’s town meeting in the town meeting before

54:58 and, um, I think that won’t Yep. And it hasn’t been accepted. Excuse me. It won’t, uh, it was the statement that was, uh, that occurred. I think you’re gonna be giving the same statement. Well, we’ll see. And I, I think that, um, I thinks fine that you wish to do it. Um, if people that you know haven’t believed it, they may believe you instead of someone else. It’s not people I know. It’s, I mean, you hear it over and over and over again and I mean, if you’re not, your fingers are in your ears. So it’s, um, you know, there needs to be something better out there else. You’re just not gonna be, the town needs better trust and, you know, and I you, you’re gonna, we’re gonna have to disagree, you know, disagree on this that, you know, if you think what’s said in the past was fine,

55:43 I’m telling you loud and clear. It’s not. And like that’s been said over and over and over again. Well, the people that are giving the statements of people I’m working with it and, and mm-Hmm. They have been giving, I’ll take a crack at it. I’ll, I’ll be listening, but, um, I, whatever you say it, it’s, it’s still from the board. It’s not from you directly. And I’d like Andrew to be able to read it and, and work with you. Well, obviously it’s something that we’ll be working on together. Obviously. I think it’s, you know, I think to Tom’s able to try to reach a different group of people, I, I think he, he’s bringing a different perspective to this. Yep. Um, you know, he wasn’t involved in the project during it. So I’m coming from the perspective of people that don’t think it’s been good enough. So if I think it’s good enough, then I’m speaking

56:30 to those people and it’s on my bar. The ones that have been said in the past, people do not think it’s good enough. So you need to come from a different perspective. And, you know, as much as I’m, you know, okay with Andrew going up to the mic and talking about just about anything, I think it would go over a lot better if I did it Honestly. Like I’m the director and it’s coming, you know, the board made all the decisions, the board makes all the decisions. Yeah. So I think that is appropriate. Mm-Hmm. I would like you to do it. I think that it’s great that you’re offering, but I also think that the statement has to be seen by the director and the board because Oh, No, no. Everyone will see it well in advance. That’s why I’m, that’s why I’m bringing this up now. You’re not making, Making for yourself. You’re, No, I’m not making a statement for myself. I was not part of it. So I can’t be a statement

57:16 for myself. Right. Thank you for offering that. Yeah, that’s great. I mean, I think all we can do is offer more goodwill. Yes. You know, we have other ideas that we want to try to get past for the transfer station, uh, and we need to continue to, you know, have this open conversation Yes. With The public. Exactly. Um, so the other piece, you know, I assume we’re all set with that we’ll continue to work on that as we get forward closer to town meeting. Um, but obviously as it always works, town meeting comes quickly. So, you know, we will continue to work on this. Um, we had a great meeting with, uh, individuals that can help us with a stickless system. Um, so Tom and I met with some in, or an individual, uh, and you know, kind of went over more in detail of what we were interested in. Um, you know, I think we were both very

58:02 positive with what we learned. Um, I think kind of the idea is that we want to get through construction, um, and then really start to dive into this. Um, I think this is a system that, you know, one of the great things that I wanted to do for us is that it’s so hard for people to have to go and buy stickers year after year. If we can get to a system where you can either just automatically renew or you can just go back to the website and click the button, say I need to renew for the sticker, that would be a huge, you know, effort. I think it could potentially be a huge saving of time for our office and stuff like that. So I’m looking forward to that. I think, you know, I think there was a lot of positives outta that meeting. Yeah. Um, and I think and better resources for you there because you, you know, you’re not losing any people on the job, but you’re giving them more time to Focus. Um, and I, and I’m hopeful

58:48 that it could just be an easier system for every, you know, for everybody. Um, and I think that’s the idea is to continue to look at other things to make our operations as, you know, as great as possible. Yeah. More streamlined. Yeah. More streamlined. Just easier for everybody. Yeah. I know we just recently had the meeting. You didn’t get the estimate yet, did you? No, I did not get the estimate. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Um, I understand that sticker always tied in with the beach sticker beach access. Yep. Is that something that you guys discussed with the individual about? So we didn’t discuss that with the individual. Um, but they’re pretty connected, so it’s, yeah, they’re, they’re definitely connected and there’s other, so there’s like several different ways you could do. Um, so you could, the STICKLESS system operates several different ways. So it operates one way using a camera recognizing license

59:35 plate, but you could also do use an F-R-F-I-D tag, um, which you can have on your car. It’s a pretty low cost to have the tag itself. And so by having that tag, you could have multiple points in town that could be tagged potentially checking that RFID tag. So if you would drive through the transfer station, it’s gonna be picked up on, you know, one set of machines. If you go to the beach, you know, obviously deux is the other beach. It, I think it’d be pretty low cost to have that other, you know, an RFIP tag identify are there. And that would be super easy. Um, I think what, you know, so I think that can be handled and stuff like that. Mm-Hmm. Um, I think there’s always conversation about, you know, splitting these up, keeping ‘em together. And just so everybody knows, the only way to split these up is to go back to town meeting.

1:00:21 It was put together at town meeting. But if, if that’s what people would want, obviously an article can be written and people can bring that to town. Um, but I think it could work, you know, I think we could easily work with Park and Rec to have this stickless system work for them as well. Is that something that needs to go to town meeting for the Stickless system? No, I don’t think so. No. Um, yeah, you know, I didn’t, I don’t think there’s anything in there that was like, oh no, this would need to go to town for approval. And so no, it’s extremely low cost. Yeah, it’s, yeah, I mean, they’re touting pretty low cost, so I mean I obviously this technology is advancing on a daily basis and I think that the longer weight, the cheaper rate probably is gonna become, but also there’s other pieces that you could add to it,

1:01:07 you know, but I think it was a great, you know, so we, I mean we looked at a sticker list system, I don’t know how many years ago, probably five years. And that system was roughly $60,000. This system’s nowhere near the cost of that, so that would be good. Um, so I’m gonna end with the Stickless system, but I’m gonna jump right into holiday schedule for the transfer station. Um, so with the way the holiday lies, this kinda creates a little bit of an issue for the transfer station. So obviously, um, we have the holiday of December, 2020 fifth. Um, and so the Mary Alley building Abbott Hall will be closed on Friday the 27th.

1:01:52 Um, I’m proposing to give my employees a long weekend that we close on December 23rd. Employees would have to work that Friday. So Mary Alley would be closed, they would be working employees that technically should have the day off would be offered a floating holiday. Um, I need two heavy equipment operators to come in and collect the curbside trash truck. Those employees get a four hour overtime call in. So it generally doesn’t take them four hours of work, but I have to call ‘em in to do that work. And so that we, they would get that as well. That’s the Saturday you’re talking about? No, I’m, so, I’m changing what we discussed. Oh. So I’m ch Alright. Suggesting that we close the 23rd

1:02:39 to give everybody a long weekend, but stay open on Friday the 22nd

1:02:45 and then for the next week, What, what, what about the union does? Doesn’t the union have the, The union asks that. I make sure that if we are changing that they are offered a footing holiday and or, um, overtime. So in this case, some of ‘em are gonna get the, and or so both a floating holiday and, oh, So it’s not specific that the day before Christmas they have to be on. Yeah. So Friday the 22nd, we would be open, I don’t have to call anybody in, but the employees, there’s three employees that would get the, the floating holiday And then open again on Tuesday the 26th, Open again on Tuesday the 26th, and then again stay open on Friday the 29th. Um, but closed on the 30th

1:03:31 and then that again would allow them to have a long weekend. Um, and we resume operations on the second now for the 30th, because Republic will be operating the 26th through the 30th. I will have to call two employees in on that day. Mm-Hmm. To take The trash. Can you, can you, when you say the 20 19th, 30th, can you, you say the day of the week for us It’s Friday the 29th. So Friday the 29th, we’ll be opened, but we’ll be closed Saturday the 30th. Mm-Hmm. Okay. So instead of breaking it up, you’re gonna have Yeah. Three days in a row. Yeah, so three days in a row. So we would be closed Saturday the 23rd, Sunday the 24th, and Monday the 25th. And then we would be closed Saturday, December 30th,

1:04:19 obviously Sunday the 31st and closed Monday, January 1st. Can we put some advertising out to the community? Yeah, so we, so we have one of the larger listservs, the second largest listserv in the community. So we will, we send out an email blast, we post it on our website. Um, it generally goes to the contractors who have, um, accountants with us. So all those individuals get that I’m sure we can talk to Will about making sure it’s written in the paper so everybody understands what the schedule’s gonna be. That’s interesting that you’re able to, um, override the unions. I’m not able to override them, but we have an understanding of what the agreement’s gonna be. Is any, are any other, um, offices in town doing the same?

1:05:08 We’re we are very unique where I have to operate six days a week no matter what. I have to operate five days a week to take trash and Mm-Hmm.

1:05:20 Yeah, I’m all for it. Okay.

1:05:28 I mean, you take like, I’m just gonna do it. I just wanted to make sure that the board objected that we didn’t, that I didn’t have any issues with it. I wanted to have an open, honest conversation about it, um, and just make sure everybody was aware about it. Not sure. They don’t hate it. I, yeah, I mean, obviously there’s gonna be some people that know the best part about it is that they’re all gonna get a three day weekend, which I’m trying to give ‘em some time off and stuff like that, rather than having Friday off, come back to work on Saturday. You know, I I would much rather give them a three day weekend than, you know, this kind of split up and stuff like that. And some of ‘em are gonna benefit with additional, um, four hours floating holidays. Some of ‘em are gonna get the four hours for coming on a Saturday.

1:06:15 Um, yeah. Okay. Sounds good.

1:06:26 Into the mattress. Um, mattresses. Mm-Hmm. Um, so we, you know, obviously, so we currently do mattresses. It’s per piece. So you pay for your mattress, you pay for your box spring, uh, it’s $35 a piece. Um, just to give you some numbers of the quantity that we do. Um, so for the month of August we did 111 pieces. So both mattresses and box springs. Uh, for the month of September we did 269. Um, for October we did 204 and four November we did 248. We do a considerable amount of mattresses. We are one of the busiest mattress.

1:07:14 You, you know, recyclers on the North Shore. One of the reasons is our prices are lower than a lot of our competitors. So what I’m proposing is that we keep the $35 fee for residents with a sticker and that anybody else that brings a mattress into our facility pays $75. And the way I get the $75 is that Georgetown Transfer Station or Gmail os, which is the other location that everybody goes to, is 75. So if I don’t match theirs, everyone’s gonna come to me. Yeah. So, no, I think that’s the right approach You’re being competitive with as the business for the outsiders with other businesses in the area,

1:08:01 but you’re using Marblehead as a utility to be good to the residents. I think that’s the exact right approach. Okay. So I, I do need a motion for this. I need a motion for residence with the residential stickers. Stay 35. Yeah. And everybody else that comes into the facility, it’s 75 per unit. I make the motion for 35 and, uh, in with a sticker 75 out of town. Do you want two Different motions Or No, it can be one motion. That’s fine. Okay. I’ll, I second. All in favor? Unanimous,

1:08:36 Uh, website. I know Tom, you wanted to talk about. Yeah. And um, you know, this is, uh, lemme just grab a couple.

1:08:46 So

1:08:58 Sorry Marty, you’re gonna have to share. I’m sorry. Pause. Um, alright. So I think, you know, what I’m talking about is, is definitely a different step for, um, the Board of health, but I, and I think it’s gonna touch on a lot of things that Tom and Sorrow was talking about, about improving public health in general in the town, and that it expands to more things, um, than we normally think. So, um, I’ll just do a little intro on this. Like, you know, we talk about being prepared for the next pandemic. What, what is that? Is it like, it’s just test kits? It’s a, we are not dealing with the underlying problem. And when you look at, uh, the, the best prep preparation for this, it’s not pharmaceutical. It’s a healthy population. And, um, the US had 70 per 17% of the covid deaths in the world,

1:09:44 despite having only 4.2% of the population. That says a lot right there. We are an unhealthy, uh, nation, and we get, are getting unhealthier by the minute. If you look at the graph I gave you, um, you can see in the past 20 years we’ve gone from 30.5% of our population being obese to 42.4. And that’s, this is obese, not overweight. Alright. So it’s like, and then in kids it’s gone from about 15% to a little over 20% and that one’s terrifying for me. So, um, there’s not a lot of, you know, I know Thomas Ro I support him all the way in, in, in building a group and doing, you know, uh, trying to figure it out, um, with a smaller board, but I also think we could do it on our website. And I look at the Covid como comorbidities

1:10:30 and I look list, um, a list seven of ‘em. So obesity, type two diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, many types of cancer, mental illness, body pain, and difficulty functioning physically six of those seven because the first one, um, is obesity are also a result a health negative health effect of obesity. So you, you gotta attack it at the pro. And then obesity on top of it as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, gallbladder disease, osteoporosis, sleep apnea, low quality of blood could go on and on and on. Masks, locks down, social distancing. Um, they weren’t the solution to the underlying problem. And in fact, many of ‘em showed to be counterproductive when you look at the explosion in mental health issues and even this graph with, um, obesity.

1:11:15 And so we have, we have an unhealthy population and our government just quite frankly, is not good at this. And, and that’s understandable. You know, when I look at 2011, pizza was classified as a vegetable in schools so long as it had the right amount of tomato paste. That’s insane. Alright. Uh, the most widely purchased product of SNAP benefits is soda. That’s insane. You know, we’re, we’re just not good at this. And so, you know, I, I commend people and I’d love to be a part of like when Tom Massaro does it, but I think we have resources in town and I’m just strictly talking in town and I’m not, you know, that we should, I think, promote on our website both mental and physical. So on the mental portion, I’d say, you know, the counseling center, I’d say the mental health task force, and Joanne stole my thunder earlier

1:12:01 because I was gonna point out the YMCA had a, uh, you know, mental health director. And so that one’s kind of a twofer because you can put that on the physical health too. Um, in the physical health, I’d put, you know, the local fitness facilities, uh, you know, juujitsu, the JCC across? Yeah, the JCC was a big one for me growing up. And I tell, I, I do talk to these people about, you know, the JCCI remember specifically when I was a kid, they offered lower rates, um, for kids. And it was awesome because we all went and then Phoenix Fitness followed suit and did the same thing. And then because we joined, our parents joined, and so it worked out for the entire community. I don’t know where those things went. I don’t know if they do ‘em anymore. I know Kim proudly, um, I mentioned it to her and she immediately added it to her website

1:12:46 that adolescent we, um, pay less. But I also know the community, these things build. So like, I’ve never done CrossFit a day in my life, but I know when I’m in a room with a CrossFitter, because they talk about CrossFit and all their friends at CrossFit and all that stuff, and they love it. It’s an addiction, it’s a healthy addiction, but they build a community and for their mental, um, wellness, you know, maybe that was a lonely person before and now they’re not. And like when I talk about, you know, the grant money I’m trying to get for, you know, the mental health thing, that’s because my gym is my community. These people didn’t know me outside of there, and then they ask about what I’m doing. They love hearing about this stuff, and then they become resources. They check in on me if I miss a day or make fun of me, whatever it is. And then, um, so we have these resources and I think it’s low hanging fruit. Like, you know, I, I put it like this in here, but I think I could make it a lot simpler.

1:13:31 You know, it’d just be the name of it and it would be like, you click it and it’s a direct link and you can see what they offer. Similar to what we do for like, um, you know, uh, domestic violence or substance abuse. It’s just a central location where people can find what works for them and how they can get healthier if they want to go that route, because it’s never a one size fits all, you know? And you know, when I look at the CDC website, I, you know, I took a look at it for, um, uh, for, you know, I, I decided to pick something random, like a 42-year-old male that weighs 180 pounds and is five 11 where we got five of those. And I found the recommendations and they were terrible as far as me knowing my own body and what’s healthy for me, it was a one size fits all thing. And all I did was put xs on everything that didn’t work. You know? And when it tells me what to do for, um,

1:14:20 my, you know, for exercise it says lift weights, it’s kind of it, and it’s actually dangerous. It must be like lift weights. So putting those facilities out there, you know, some people can’t lift weights, but Jehovah’s great. You know, wouldn’t it be great if they knew that these things existed? So all I’m saying is like, we can build out our website. I, you know, I have people in Lynn contacting me already about the fentanyl strips. They’re co they’re paying attention. They’re copying this. And I want to, and I think we should make our town website. I want the other boards and, uh, the other departments to copy us. Brett Murray has spoken a lot about how our town website, you know, it’s not as nice as Inghams and stuff like that. He’s probably right. And so I think as a board, we could show that we’re going to, you know, put our town resources out there so that people can find ‘em in one centralized location

1:15:06 and if they want to and be a healthier population, I’m not gonna promote one over the other. It should just be alphabetical order. And that would be it. Thank you for that presentation. Um, you’re very excited and I think that’s great. And, and, um, every time I go into a physician’s office, they ask me Mm-Hmm. If I’ve been exercising and what I’ve done, and but they also ask about diet. Yeah. They ask about stress, they ask about, And a lot of these places About abuse. Yeah. Which they ask about a lot of different things. So I think that we really need to not just focus on No. And I know, and a lot of these places do have that V at the JCC is fantastic. I talk to him about that. The time Drew, uh, Gustafson down at, uh, um, uh, Jesus, why am I forgetting this place down by the old townhouse? And no one even knows it’s there achieved performance.

1:15:53 He’s fantastic. He’s an ex Michigan football player, you know, got asked by the NFL. You wanna see someone’s carved out his stuff. I mean, he knows what he’s talking about. So see, people like this, they, most of these places do have nutritionists on hand. I can talk to you and, and especially with nutrition, everyone’s different. So it is never like going to a CDC website like myplate.gov, that’s a one size fits all. And a lot of that stuff is just, just flat out wrong. So it’s, uh, for, for anybody. In fact, you shouldn’t be drinking a a cup of a hundred percent fruit juice. That’s bad for you. Lot of sugar. A lot of sugar. Yes, exactly. The only difference between that and Pepsi is vitamin C. So why they put that here, I don’t know. But, um, you know, so those people are the experts and I know they’re the experts because if they weren’t, they’d be out of business. So I think, you know, they’re, they’re a resource in town,

1:16:41 just like the rest of the community is. And I think we should highlight it to help make a healthy Community. I just want, wanna finish. You have a lot of enthusiasm, but there’s a lot that goes into it other than physical education, I think that we need to expect, um, expand your thoughts on other areas. As I mentioned several things, life changes that people have. Mm-Hmm. That’s causes stress. You know, I talked about physician regular checkups, both medical and dental. Uhhuh. You, you can’t have a good diet if you don’t have good teeth. So it’s, you know, it just goes hand in hand. It may be my, my bias, but, uh, that’s another way. So I think that it’s a, a, a great start, but it, there’s a lot that we need to add to that.

1:17:27 Thank you for your enthusiasm. All right. Do we wanna add it as a line item on the, uh, next agenda to see what you want to add to it? Well, I, I have something. Can I jump in? Yes. Um, I think that I saw this on the agenda and I, I appreciate your enthusiasm. I agree that when you are exercising your feeling better Mm-Hmm. Generally. Um, so I always, I agree that’s a health benefit for everyone. Um, and I think as a, a town department, it’s also really important to piggyback on this, we’ve got a park and rec, and I think if you go and enjoy the beautiful resources that they build and maintain for us, we can really kind of highlight that as a genuine resource in our town. Um, the trail, you know, some of the things that great.

1:18:15 The trail and, and people. And I think the more people that think about that as, um, a resource that they can enjoy that has health benefits, um, that maybe they can contribute to. Like I know they’re always looking for people to, to get involved and Yeah. Help support those areas. So I think, um, I would totally agree with adding something like that on there. Park rec, I mean, the park rec does have their own part of the website, which I’m hoping, you know, put it directly added to this list right here as far as I’m concerned. And it would just go right to theirs. And then I’ll talk to Matt Martin and some of the other ones on there and be like, Hey, you see what we’re doing over here? Do that on yours. You know, and like, let’s build it out. Let’s make it, you know, more user-friendly website where the town can get excited to go to the town website and find the resources they have in their own community.

1:19:02 Well, I think something, I do have a little expertise that I was hard won because when I joined the mental health task force, our number one agenda that took months and was really difficult was building the website, marblehead cares.org, which was a central place to store the resources and the tools and the, um, opportunities for people to connect with things that they may not, you know, be able to find readily on the internet. Mm-Hmm. Um, so I think if you talk to Peter, uh, schlock, sch, sch Slack, pronounce his name wrong, but I think, uh, I mean, I think you have a, a talent, um, uh, much more of a computer talent than some of us, but

1:19:48 No, I’m not, I haven’t built a website in 20 years, So, okay. It’s, it’s quite a, quite a task. And I think, um, well, I mean, as far as like, like I said, it does nothing complicated similar to what we have, you know, in there, when you go to domestic violence, it’ll just list the place, the name of it, and when you click on it, it goes directly to their website. And that’s where, so we’re not building anything out on ours, per se, except for lists that have a direct link to theirs. And I think, um, certainly something else I can just share about this experience is that there’s, you know, changes, organizations changed, contact information changes. So it’s, Yeah, we’d have to re-up once a year, just be like once, once, yeah. I’ll check in. I’ll make my personal responsibility to check in with all of them and make sure that they’re all still operational.

1:20:36 So, so one of the things that we do need to check on is about, you know, talents promoting businesses. Mm-Hmm. But I think the idea of what you’re wanna put on the website is totally, you know, totally great. So obviously you, we wanna have resources about proper exercises and where, you know, where should people go to get all this information. Obviously when you start to look at trying to find some of this information, if you go to the website, you get totally overwhelmed. Mm-Hmm. And like you said, some of it’s correct, some of it’s not. So it would be great if we could kind of find the correct resources and stuff like that and, and, and share those resources on our website. We’re not necessarily, you know, again, I’m not so sure we can promote businesses, but like provide that information to people, you know, obviously that, you know, is preventing them

1:21:23 or, you know, they don’t have to go to the, the website and just to the wide, you know, worldwide web and look for all this information. They could come to ours and get that Mm-Hmm. We’d also wanna do a piece on nutrition. Mm-Hmm. And again, there’s so much information about nutrition out there, you know, again, so many people will say, oh, drinking fruit juice is great. You know, what am I doing wrong? And I think we need to provide that information. Well thi this is the concern with it and we need to provide those. And yeah, a lot of times we end up using the CDC because it’s a, you know, federal government website. So we’re not promoting anybody. We’re just trying to give, we’re trying to give the be best information. It, you know, we, we wanna try to find those resources and put ‘em on our website. Um, so let’s come up, you know, obviously with the exercise, nutrition, um, the physical activity, um, obviously like, you know, time

1:22:09 Outdoors. Yeah. Ti yeah, time outdoors, you know, the benefits of physical health for mental health. We wanna find great resources that we can share with our community that we have already gone through and say, this is correct. You know, we’ve already curated this whole list and made sure this is something that, You know, the counseling center just said that they’re not doing groups. We could offer groups, uh, for people to join walking groups out there. Yeah. And if they wanna then meet for coffee and have a their little More Better as far as I’m concerned. Session. I also thought, um, that maybe a, a spring fair, like you had the mental health fair, we could do a spring fair on, on, on, uh, physical and mental health or diet nutrition, which is my area.

1:22:55 Yeah. But, but I do think this is gonna continue to be on our agenda. We’re gonna continue to talk about this Mm-Hmm. You know, we’re gonna continue to build our website. Obviously websites really need to evolve. They should not be static. Um, and I think this is something that, you know, we all care about, we need to continue to work on. And So do you need, do you, would you say the first step is, do you need to check on parameters that we can go for and, okay. So we’ll put that, you know. We’ll, but, But I think, you know, as I work on the parameters and stuff like that, I think people, you know, it maybe you could say, come up with a list, you know, I wanna see exercise, nutrition, you know, you know, I always have a tough time with nutrition because, you know, I know some extremely fit people that do the exact opposite of me. Yeah. You know, and it’s like, so, um, it’s, it’s always something I struggle with to know what’s what for who, you know. Yep. Um,

1:23:42 I think steer Think we need people that are knowledgeable to Yeah. No, and that’s why I say it’s more of an individual thing and that’s why, you know, I try not to comment too much, But I think you might be able to find some resources out there That says It’s an individual thing and everybody’s kind of different and know this, this diet over here might work. Yeah. The JCC, as far as I’m concerned, has the best resource for that in, in vj. Yeah. And, you know, He’s a fabulous person. Mm-Hmm. Um, so yeah. You know, we can continue to keep it on the, on the, the agenda. Yeah. And maybe we would think about a affair or maybe also another ideas if the groups I, I, I was surprised that they haven’t been having groups and, you know, when we get together with Yeah. With buddies or make new buddies, but, And support groups.

1:24:28 I think, um, I think it’s since Covid, there’s a bit of a paralysis still with communities reengaging. I work in the, yes. In the healthcare space where there’s the MS support groups and they used to have 50 people every month at a meeting at the bi, and now it’s four to six people each month. So people just are still inhibited from really getting in, getting in into Those is the good reason right now. Yeah. Yeah. Are you gonna Yeah. Director’s report. Yeah. You mentioned something about that. Um, so obviously, you know, we currently, you know, COVID is, the numbers are increasing across the state. Um, they are taking up, you know, COVID patients are taking up 33% of the beds in all hospitals in the state. Um, we do have a limited of test kits upstairs that are open to the public to take.

1:25:14 Um, we had a run on them the last couple of days. We’re trying to get more from the state. Um, but, you know, please call the office or stop by and there’s test gets just outside the office. Um, I just wanted to go over curbside collection a little bit. Um, so obviously we operate curbside collection. It’s a Monday through Friday operations, unless there’s a holidays, we have two, technically three trucks on all the main routes. There’s a trash truck and there’s a recycling truck. They might look the exact same, but they’re picking up trash and recycling. All items have to be curbside by 7:00 AM. A lot of times when we get calls of mist, the we’re really on top of Republic currently, and they’re gotten to the point where they’re telling us,

1:26:01 or they’re able to tell us what time the truck was on the street and say, well, technically that that material was not out, we’re not going back to pick that up. So we are dealing with some of that stuff. So we just wanna mention that, you know, the requirements around curbside collection stated must be curbside by 7:00 AM but, and They can’t go up before 7:00 PM Is that correct? You cannot put it out the night before, before Actually, I think it’s 6:00 PM Is It? Yeah. And that allows you to, you know, if you’re leaving town and stuff like that, you can put it out. It’s supposed to be, my Husband will be happy about that. ‘cause I keep yelling 7:00 PM and he, yeah, It’s supposed to be leaving today. You know, if it is minister, something like that. If you feel like you were missing inappropriately, you’re supposed to call, uh, Republic. Um, if there could, you know, if there are issues

1:26:46 and you feel that you’re not being pleased heard, please call the office. We’ll help you look into this stuff. We’ll often go out and take care of it just to make sure we get this office. It doesn’t stay there. Um, I just wanna remind everybody about recycling. We follow Recycle Smart. The guidelines are on our website. Um, they’re on the state website. It’s recycle smart mass.org. It tells you exactly what we accept. There’s what’s called a encyclopedia. So if you’re looking to see if you can recycle this item, you can type it in and it’ll tell you if it goes in the trash or the recycling. Just want to kind of remind everybody, um, obviously during the holidays, um, there’s a ton of the extra material. Um, please collapse all your boxes, try to get everything into your recycle bin. Um, make sure things are rinsed out properly, just according

1:27:34 to the guidelines. Um, obviously we do have trash limits, um, that the Republic is adhering to. Um, we’ve asked Republic if there is an issue with their trash or your recycling, and they’re not gonna take it. They’re supposed to tag it with a, it’s a bright yellow sticker. Um, so look for these tags. Um, but if you have questions, please call Republic. If you’re unable to get anything answers, um, please call the office And, and you can get that, uh, sheet off the, off the website. Yep. You can get the sheet off the website. Oh, leaf collection. Um, this is a week for leaf collection. Leaf collection is leaf and grass only. It’s bags only. We no longer take barrels. Uh, we are running into weight issues with the barrels being overweight. Uh, it’s an OSHA violation and stuff like that.

1:28:21 We only take leaf and grass. No sticks, no rocks, no other material, no pumpkins. Those are the items that they’re willing to pick up.

1:28:31 Uh, this is, yep. Not fully related, but I think we need to mention it is especially Will here, the Chris Herring thing. Oh, yeah, yeah. That’s, that’s last of my, yep. Okay. Um, so last we have a, uh, so Marblehead Public Schools is, has brought in Chris Herring. Um, so Chris Herring is a former MBA Celtics player from Fall River. Uh, mass. Chris had a successful professional basketball career when he lost it all to this disease of addiction. Uh, Chris has now been sober for 15 years and has sis since shared his journey with others, with his goal of having a positive impact on them. So Chris will be here January 10th, uh, 2024. Uh, he’ll be speaking both to the schools and then is doing a night, uh, engagement.

1:29:17 And that’s at six 30 to 8:00 PM and Marblehead High School Auditorium. Uh, so please come out to that, uh, support Chris and support everybody in the community Who’s sponsoring that? Uh, it’s technically being sponsored by Marblehead Public Schools and the PCA. Yeah. And the Female Human And the Female Humane Society. Yeah. Uh, Chris spoke to this community about, my kids were in high school 10 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s everything that I have. Well, thank you for your Yep. Extensive report. Um, I think anything else before we go to public comment, the business, we picked up a few pieces of the business. Um, our next meeting in January is the second

1:30:06 Tuesday of the month, which is the ninth. And I wanna remind you that in February, it’s the first Friday. Um, it will be, I’m first, the first Monday, I apologize, uh, on the 5th of February that was voted. That Might need to Make an adjustment to that. That Was for the February 2nd one. The February one. I’m Gonna be on a plane Might. Yeah. So you’ve got adjusted. So it, so let’s, We’ll send out some dates around that. I know you are trying to travel, you are traveling, stuff like that. So we’ll figure that out. That’s the, um, latest. I can do The second Fifth. We’ll, We’ll send out dates and try to, you know, we don’t need to sit here and do this now. We’ll, we’ll be a month. We can figure that out,

1:30:54 Um,

1:30:58 remotely and I’ll Be, I’ll be on the Yeah, Yeah. No, well, I mean, I can do it another day, but remotely. Yeah, We’ll send out dates and we’ll figure out an alternative for that. Okay. Okay. Um, all right. So any, any thinking audience, Steve, first of all, turn, excuse me one minute. Oh, Steve, Turn right. The trailer’s awesome. I’ve heard nothing but positive comments from the people, what you say. It’s still a little bit fine tuning to go, but what an improvement. It’s, so I have a question on the new compactor. Is that gonna basically go where the existing one is, will be such that the existing one keeps breaking down?

1:31:47 Can the new one be put in and then the building work around it? So the elevation where the trailer is parked, I’m gonna say in the back of the pit Yeah. Is dictating the elevation of the compactor. So the elevation, so that grading in the back, that needs to be completed first, then the, the compactor would be installed. Now if I had a, you know, I don’t even want to say it, but a catastrophic failure, I’d have to figure something out. Yeah. So what would happen is that that compactor would be installed to fit the trailers. I would do the grading work, and then I’d have to elevate everything. The hard thing. And like, there’s two pieces to it, so that compactor iss getting replaced,

1:32:33 but the chute going into the compactor is also being replaced. Right. So if I install the compactor now, I could, it’s hard to get the compactor in there with the existing chute, but we’ve done it in the past. We’ve already rebuilt that compactor once. Right. Um, and so, you know, you would figure something out. I just hate to see the money that we keep spending with breakdowns. And you don’t have a choice. You Yeah. You don’t have a choice. Yeah. It’s a shame having that new piece of equipment sitting up there. And Yeah. The hard thing is really the, the elevations are dictating the, you know, where it’s gonna sit and it’s, you know, it’s gonna be, it’s not a huge elevation change, but it’s about a foot. And so it’s gonna be sitting on, I think it’s actually gonna be sitting on the grid. Okay. And when are the 2024 stickers gonna be available?

1:33:20 The 14th. Okay. So a couple days. Yep. They’re always available at the beginning of the year. Well, yeah. Yeah. We Always start get ‘em Before the beginning. Correct. And as soon as I sell them, you can start to use them. Yeah. So if like, you’re new to town, you know, as soon as, as soon as you bought that, you can use it. I saw ‘em. They look nice. Yeah. With stickers on commercial vehicles. Yes. Very few commercial vehicles have stickers. Okay. I mean, I know I don’t have one in my dump truck. I got one in my car, but I don’t have my dump truck. So the commercial sticker is for recycling. So you don’t need a commercial sticker to go across the sta scale. Right. But you needed to go and use the recycling area. Uh, is it possible to look into

1:34:08 when you’re restructuring fees? Yep. Like with the mattresses I need? Yep. It’s a wonderful idea. It’s such that we could require even work like mine to have a resident sticker and have resident stickers say 80 bucks or whatever it is, that non-resident stickers be a different, and the fee for dumping be different. I mean, it’s something that the board could consider. So, um, I essentially what you’re asking for is that if you’re a commercial, and you can correct me if I’m wrong. Yeah. If you’re a commercial business in town, you would potentially have a different rate than a commercial business attitude. I, I think that’s something that we can take a look at. I think we’re missing the boat on thousands and thousands of, I hate to interrupt, but we’ve been telling people that it’s not a discussion time.

1:34:55 And I don’t wanna put I, Steve, I know you long time and I don’t want one person to say, well, how can we talk to Steve answer five questions of his, but we’re not doing it to others. Please make An appointment with me or, you know, we can discuss all this stuff. I’m always open to have this discussion. I’m sorry for both of you, but I Do have one question for Ms. Mill. The films that you mentioned, one was $700, the other like 300. Is that to buy the film or to use it? It’s to use it. It’s a one, it’s a licensing screen, edger, screen edges for, uh, one showing Of the film. If you Publicize that, I think you’d be, many people would pick up the tab for, I think if you went to the theater, they would pay for it too.

1:35:40 I think. I think you’re right, Steve. Yeah. Other thing is with the council on the, uh, up at the Hobb Center there, is that a charitable organization if you make a donation there? Yes, Sir. Yes. It’d be good to publicize that too. I get a bunch of, That’s the friends of the, um, what’s the Friends of the Marblehead Counseling Center? No, I’d rather take, no, it’s a, a Family make a donation there than counsel, Family, friends, I think it’s called. Does the press know that? What’s the name of that group? Family Friends. I mean, I support her, so I, it should know, but yes. Yeah. Um, Tom, day 20. Stony Brook Road. I just have a quick question for Andrew about Chris s talks. Yeah. So you mentioned the, I believe for students Yep.

1:36:29 Is An evening one geared more toward families with addiction. Um, so it is just very sim it makes us the same discussion or same presentation. Um, you know, obviously he’s gonna be available afterwards for some q and a. Um, so, you know, he might change it a little bit, but generally they’re about the same. And how’s it gonna be publicized? Um, so I believe it’s being publicized through the school. I mean, obviously we can send out, um, serve, I’ll put, I’ll put it in our news brief. Yeah. And, and I’ll, we’ll send it out in our new notification system. Great. Okay, Matt, because it looks, thank you. Anyone else? Thank you all for coming.

1:37:18 Nope, we’re good.

1:37:25 Are we good? All good. Alright. Uh, wish everybody happy holiday. Yes, you too. Happy New Year. Healthy one. See, um, motion To adjourn. Yeah. You say, but not too much fun. Motion to adjourn. Motion adjourn. Second. All favor in favor. Thank you.