Board of Health: January 9, 2024

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.

0:01 Good evening, everyone. Happy New Year to all of you, to my colleagues, to, uh, our staff, the audience here at home. I hope everybody had good holidays and, uh, that we’re ready for a new year and a successful year. So, um, with that, I’d like to move on. Uh, our minutes are not ready, so we’ll go on to, uh, also, uh, we have to mention that, um, a tobacco control person is not gonna be, uh, here this evening. She had an emergency over at Salem, uh, not personal, just something with her business. And, uh, she hopes to be here on March 12th. Okay. That down if you want.

0:49 Uh, before we get started, uh, any further, um, I just wanna remind everybody of the meeting tomorrow at, uh, at the high school, um, Chris Christian, a football player who has had some struggles, is now sharing his story with others. And I hope all will attend. Um, I think will be inspiring. Hope the weather holds up and holds off, whichever’s appropriate, and, um, that there’ll be a good audience. Is he speaking by the way, during the day? Yes, students. Yep. That’s good. ‘cause that’s always, that’s always a nice, uh, way to kick it off. So, uh, with that, with said, I think that it, it’ll be good

1:38 to hear from the mental health task force. Great. Uh, well, it’s fresh in my mind because we held our mental health task force meeting last night, and, uh, we did speak about the Chris Herring, uh, talk. And we’re gonna have a table at that event tomorrow evening. We’ve got a lot of members of the task force that plan to attend, um, and support this effort. Um, we also had a great meeting. Members of our task force. Had a great meeting with the Marblehead current editorial team, and we’re very excited about our continued collaboration with the current and the article that we submit monthly. Um, we’ve got some great suggestions going forward that we’re excited to tackle in the coming months,

2:23 looking at, uh, climate anxiety, navigating mental health in the digital age, uh, teletherapy. I think certainly that’s become something very, uh, common. Even our, our local Marblehead Community Counseling Center engages in teletherapy, and I think it may be, you know, helpful to share some background about what that may entail for people as they, um, look, look to that as a potential way to connect with that resource. Um, and that care healthcare. Uh, and we were talking about, as we’ve been discussing on the task force, looking into supporting the screen ages program that we found out in Linfield, um, that seemed to be something that brings a lot of value.

3:10 It’s a media movie system that really tells some great stories and gives some, uh, great information for community members around the different, um, mental health concerns kids engage in over their, their screens. Um, and so we may do an article when we’re able to pull that program through in Marblehead, but we certainly want to, um, buttress our relationship with the Marblehead Public Schools. Um, and we are actually meeting that my co-chair and I Mark Labon are meeting with, uh, Julia Ferrari, the assistant superintendent. She actually was generous to give us some time this week to sit down and, uh, make some plans as to how we can collaborate with our public schools

3:57 and support the schools, the students staff with some of the resources that we have on the task force. Um, and I, and one of the projects that we are investigating was sent out last night, Charlie Stein, who has a program on, um, positive trauma-informed strength-based training. And he may be someone we’re gonna explore bringing in to do some, uh, program at a program at the high school or in the community. Prob I just say the high school because, uh, the auditorium, what we’ve utilized in the past. But we also want to do some, um, some of our articles looking at our older population. And we’ve got great resources. We’ve got, of course, Lori and Sharon, uh, who’ve worked on the task force

4:44 and do excellent work and have excellent programming at the cons on aging. Um, and the other thing I wanted to mention was Peter sch Slack works with us in maintaining our Marblehead Cares website. And thanks, so thankful to him because, um, he continues to update the content and it’s something we’re continuing to build, um, bringing new resources, um, into our website. And he was, I, I just have to confess, I have not a lot of, uh, technical talent, but he was able to send out, and it, he said it didn’t take him any time at all. So I think he’ll be able to teach me how do we understand how our website’s being accessed and utilized by community members. And I was really excited to see that. Um, you just got this back to me today, the past year

5:33 of 2023, January through December, we had 5,742 unique visitors to the Marblehead pairs website, and that included 10,354 visits. And if you think we’re a town of 22,000 community members and to have 10,354, um, visits onto that website, um, I, I think that does speak to, um, that it’s, it’s being used and we wanna make sure what is being used. So he also gave me some information as to how we can dig into this, uh, data that can be collected and see what’s really, what are people looking at and how can we maybe continue to

6:18 elevate the content in those areas. So, um, that’s something we’re gonna be working on. That’s very exciting. So that’s, I think that’s, So you say 5,000 unique, that means that different 5,000 different people Yes. We’re clicking on and of that it looks like maybe according to this math, they each, if it was those 5,000 people, they each connected twice because the number of visits was over 10,000. So I think, um, we’ll be learning more about that and excited to expand on that information. Well, it’s being used. Yes. I know it’s exciting for your report and thank you for doing what you’re doing and meeting with all these various people along with your meetings, because I know that’s a lot of effort and time to do that, to set them up, to be there

7:05 and, um, gather that information and bring it back to us. So it’s a whole team. I, I think we’re really lucky. We’ve got a tremendous, a, a town ripe with talented, compassionate, caring residents that get involved and give their time to this task force. Any questions for Jolene?

7:29 Well, and we are moving right along, Right? We’re moving right along. Uh, so the transfer station will go out to bid January 17th. Um, bids will be due back, uh, February 21st. Um, obviously there’ll be, um, this all is, we’re using that putting out through Project Dog. Um, we’ll have a day where contractors can come and ask us questions. Um, but the big pieces that we need to talk about are kind of, so we have our budget, um, you know, our total for the construction piece of this is $1.258 million. So when we put this out the bid, um, we need to make sure that we group certain things together and then we have a lot of alternates for this. So we can kinda, yes, we have to do this stuff up front.

8:15 That’s gonna be the base bid. And then alternates as in kind of descending order. These are the things that we get done if you have the additional money or as you know, as they kind of fall out. So the base bid is pit renovation ‘cause we need to make sure our pit’s operational. Um, and that will, obviously, we already have the compactor on site. We have our, you know, that’s purchased and all that stuff. We have an agreement with the con to have that equipment installed by, uh, east Coast compactor, uh, who purchased the equipment for us. They’re also gonna do the steel, what we call the funnel work. So how the material gets down in there. So the pit renovation itself would be the cladding, the upfront, the little man shack, all the stuff

9:01 that’s associated with that. Uh, then we have the site work. So that’s gonna be the new scale pit that’s gonna go in front of the compact compactor out back where the tractor trailer sits. There’s gonna be a concrete pad installed, there’s some wall work, some wing wall work and everything associated with that. Um, regrading up front, obviously there’s some line item like driving lanes and stuff like that, but a lot of different work and stuff like that. So that’s the site work. Um, the last thing that we’re included in the base bid is the scale house foundation. Obviously where we place the temporary trailer is out of way, out of the way for the foundation for the scale house. So all that work can continue. Then we get into the alternates.

9:47 So we five different alternates, the new scale house, the transaction, hu pad, uh, the swap shed pad, the transaction Hutt, and then the swap shed. So this is where I kinda want to talk about obviously the scale house is the second most important. You know, obviously besides the site work and stuff like that, the scale house is really the second most important piece of the projects. So that is gonna be alternate number one. Alternate number two. We can kind of discuss this one a little bit. I have it as the transaction pad. So the transaction pad is gonna be used in the residential area for residents to, you know, potentially purchase stickers, pay for their R acss, pay for TV drop offs, little things that, that way residents don’t need to go to the scale house

10:34 to do minimal transactions. We’re also gonna switch over to do a line of transactions online. You’ll be able to print off a receipt, bring that up, show that to the, the attendant working in those areas and go. Um, so we kind of have that as the next big piece that we need. We want, wanna make sure that that’s there. And after that, obviously the swap shed gets quite a bit of use. There’s quite a bit of people there on Saturdays. So we have that as swap, uh, as alternate number three. Um, after that we wanna make sure that the transaction Hutt gets built. Um, and then after that we wanna make sure the swap check gets built. Questions, comments, concerns, Quick question. Yep. About the people using the transaction,

11:20 doing it for online. Yep. If they don’t print it, can they just show their phone if there’s a receipt There? Yeah, that’s gonna be, we, we’ll have to actually, you know, Marty and I will be working on moving over to online transactions and stuff like that. Um, but yeah, I mean that’s a normal thing that we all do these days is that you have a, you know, we, we really want people not to print out a receipt in a way. Right. Um, we really do want to be able to have people put that into their wallet and bring it up and say, Hey, this is what, you know, this is my receipt. Okay. Um, so that’s something that we’ll need to work forward too. Um, but that’s kind of the order. Um, obviously, you know, if there’s, you know, the big thing is opening up bids on February 21st, and then after that we can have a little bit more discussion of what we need to do, how the project is gonna proceed.

12:07 Obviously the biggest interruption is to gonna be to the commercial side. Um, so obviously the idea is that we will continue to operate. We will need to work with a contractor to continue to operate. Um, but there are gonna be some disruptions. Um, that new scale pit is going right in front of the compactor. So when they’re digging that we are gonna be down, um, obviously the idea is to leave the temporary scale where it is, um, so we can continue to weigh things in and make sure we’re, can stay operational as much as possible. Um, our main focus during construction really is for residents. Um, but as things come up, you know, we will need to meet, we will need to discuss, um, this is kind of the standard operations for during construction. And sometimes I will need to call that, you know, we,

12:53 we might need to meet more often or, you know, something might come up and I need to have Yeah. Might need to have a quick meeting just to discuss that.

13:04 Um, wait, you have them set up in the steps? Yep. Is that how it would be broken down in the bids too? Yes. Okay, perfect. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So you get the numbers for all those different things, right? Yeah. So everybody’s, you know, your base bid is gonna be lumped together with those items. Mm-Hmm. Um, but all those alternates, you’ll get a, a number each alternate. Okay, perfect. I thought that’s what I understood that you were looking for. Exactly. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so this will go out January 17th and then we’ll start to answer questions. We’ve been working with the architects town council to make sure we have every, all the language in there. Um, the one thing we don’t have currently is the permit from DEP. Uh, we’re currently waiting for the, the section chiefs to sign off on the permit and hand that over to us.

13:50 Uh, we’re supposed to have that, you know, before New Year’s. Um, it’s, you know, I wanna call and say, I really need this permit. They understand that we’re about to go out to bid. Um, but I’d also don’t wanna be too much of a pain for them where they start to ask all this, you know, the last question we got out of ‘em, the only really question was, you know, we are replacing our, um, waste oil tank. Have you had this tank before? Yes. You know, this is a, a replacement, it’s not a new new item for us. Um, so I don’t want them to start to say, well, they’re being a pain. They’re gonna start to really ask questions and kind of slow them up. Um, so I’m gonna kind of let the architect and the engineer deal with DP and, and handle that. Um, but I don’t anticipate any issues. But, but they would have to have it in by January 17th.

14:36 The d no, they don’t. I have to have it before we start construction. Okay. Yeah. So part of the bid will be the town won’t need to issue a notice, proceed to proceed for construction. So, so then If, if some of these options go over budget, would we go to town meeting or would we, We can talk about that once we get to that, to that place. So That’s probably why when we, we’ll probably need some special needs. Yeah. So February, you know, on February 21st, I will have a lot more information.

15:09 Thank you for following up on that and getting it out to get, getting it where it is right now. ‘cause it’s been a long time. Yeah. What, one question. It not totally related to the construction so much you, the speech you gave that was recorded. I just thought, um, is there a possibility of getting that put on the website? Yeah. You know where like, where the documents are, the PDFs? Yep. Just like right there. Yep. Something you see.

15:39 So I think that was really helpful. Yep. You can do that.

15:48 Andrew, with respect, if I may, to,

15:53 I understand this being broken down with, um, the scale house being number one. Yep. The transaction Transaction Hutt number two, Patent number three, the transaction Hutt building in itself. Building it, and then the swap shed building itself. Yes. And I, is it, is it fair to understand that potentially, I mean, looking at the budget of things, I know the swap shed is a building that, from my perspective, it looks an awful li the thing we’re gonna build looks an awful, like, like the, the, the building structure that’s there now, it’s not, it’s not much bigger. Right? So it’s, it’s, it is bigger than the current. So currently we’re only operating out of those two shipping containers, shipping, there is a little shed that’s there. Um, but that’s not

16:39 for the swap shed purposes and stuff like that. There’s a couple of di minimus items in there. Um, so currently we’re really just operating out of two eight by 20 shipping containers. So it’s a total of 16 by 2016 feet. Yeah. So it’s, it is bigger than that. Um, the reason why you do break it out this way as far as have the pads done during construction is that, say you did have, you know, we were over budget, we would potentially look to the tech school or the high school. Um, maybe there’s some volunteers that would be, you know, would want to take this project on. So you’re just trying to give yourself, we need a foundation. That’s not something that you’re gonna have the tech school do or anybody like that, or the high school, but it is something that you could consider, you know,

17:24 if you had the foundation, maybe somebody else could do the construction. I respect that. Yep. I, I think, and while we are figuring out things going forward, if this is something that may not be wrapped up when we’re wrapping up the pro rest of the project, uh, it’s still gonna be functioning. It’s not something that is going to hold anything up. So that’s why it’s number five. I’m from my, my, Yeah. So, you know, as far as, so I always think the new scale house, um, like I said, that that’s a, a lar that’s like the largest number that we anticipate. Yeah. Um, the swap shifts towards the back because it is also the second largest, you know, estimated costs. Um, and so if it is gonna be a budget issue Okay. That, you know, that could

18:10 potentially be one, one of the things I, I’m pleased to hear that you’re thinking of some creative ideas and I think that’s helpful to have that on the back burner, but hopefully we, The hard thing is that’s a good bid. Yeah. The hard thing is construction prices are really all over the place. Material is up. Um, yeah, it has come down from a couple years ago. Um, but you know, construction coss are still pretty high, unfortunately.

18:37 That’s the way of everything. Yeah. It is the way of everything right now.

18:43 My husband’s complaining about the cost of cereal.

18:47 I thought it was a relatively cheap deal today.

18:52 Okay. Um, you want to go on with the website? Yeah. So website. I know Tom wanted to talk about this a little bit. Um, I have a couple little handouts you guys Want. Just take me past, um, I can look back. That’s alright. Pass these. Okay. Okay. No, it should have everything. Um, so the two, You know, you called out two items that you wanted to kind of talk about. So, you know, this is just kind of the start of it and stuff like that. That’s Exactly what I like to think of it as. This, we can build off this. These are the first two and if it snowballs, That’s great, right? You sort, yeah. These are like high on your list and stuff like that. So we have a Northshore public health collaborative website.

19:40 And so this is where this information came from. By no means am I saying that you should just take this and put it this here, but I just wanted to bring your attention to it for the board to go and take a look at it. And then the board can decide, I like this, I like this, or this isn’t exactly what I was thinking of. Can we go in a different direction? Um, so, you know, the easiest thing is that I, you know, yes, it has. So on the North Shore collaborative website, if you have the mental Health piece On the back, on the back of it Mm-Hmm. That is the, all the items that we have there, the resources. So there’s a social wellness toolkit, there’s an emotional wellness toolkit. So the best thing for everybody to do is to go to this website.

20:26 And what I’ll do tomorrow is I will send you all the links. Yeah. So you don’t have to go and search for this. I will provide the links to you and then you can take a look at all these different resources that are available that, that we have chosen to put out there. Okay. And then the board can choose, let’s bring this over to our website or can we dive deeper into some of these areas and provide some additional resources or I, I don’t like this resource or whatever it is. Um, so I will provide all the links to this and then you guys can take a look at that. Um, and it’s the same thing for, uh, the physical health resources. So we have a physical health resources page and on the back of that physical health, there’s also a resources guide.

21:12 And so I will provide a link to this as well.

21:18 And then, you know, at our next meeting we can decide what we wanna pull over. Um, it’s sometimes, you know, the only way I can kind of talk about websites a little bit as I printed it off Mm-Hmm. So that’s why I kind of printed a bunch of this stuff off. Um, this is one of the examples. Yeah. This is one of the examples. This is, you know, um, one of the resources out there and stuff like that that we use currently. Do You find people are going on these sites? I I would have to talk to my, I be even able to look to see if we can get the clicks that go to the website. Um, I, you know, So we’re so smart over here. We know how Yeah. We’re learning. We are learning. So I, I just have a question. I think, you know, there’s been, uh, three

22:04 and a half years of building out the Marblehead Cares Mental Health Task Force website and I certainly appreciate the need of, of having, I I just don’t know, would it be redundant or would you just take the Marblehead Cares website as it’s been built under the auspice of the Board of Health? I, I think That’s another website that we all need to take a look at and see if there’s things that we wanna pull over to our board health page or do we wanna have a page for that that’s kind of linking the two together? Yeah, I don’t think there’s a problem with redundancies. Right. I have it both. Correct. Because I think, you know, sometimes it gets frustrating where I go to one website, I’m looking at all the stuff and then shooting me another one and I’m over there looking at all the stuff. Sometimes it is good to have redundancies. Um, but again, we can, you know, discuss all that stuff

22:51 and see what you guys like. Mm-Hmm. Um, the idea with this is just to get the board to take a look at it and decide which direction we want go in. Okay. Thank you for giving this to us. Yeah. And there’s more to come. Yeah. There. Yeah. I mean, like Tom said, this is just the beginning of the rebuilding of the website. Um, and once you’ve built it does, you know, it should always be evolving. Yeah. You know, things change, new information comes up, you wanna try to keep it, you know, up to date you wanted a place as a resource. So you do want people to go there all the time. Um, you know, eventually, you know, it’d be great if we can, our, our town website needs some work. There’s an article out to get some money for it. Yeah. I signed it. So, um, you know, it’d be great

23:37 to have some widgets on there to have some different items that are always, you know, right in front of you. Um, so it, it’s something that, you know, it would be great if we had a full IT department in town. And one of the things that they constantly worked on was the website. Are we still relying on Joanne Tini to Yes. In addition to her full-time job Yep. Manage These. Yep. Yep.

24:04 Uh, is, is that, is there a director’s report? ‘cause I don’t, Yeah, so the director’s report, um, so we’re going into budget season. So January 24th at 6:00 PM is the state of the town, and that is the kickoff to the budget season. So once we get through that, um, we will start to meet with our liaisons. I’ll start to bring the budget to the board. We can start talking about budget. Um, currently the direction that we’ve been given, um, is level funded or, you know, level services and level funded. Um, there’s things that we want to continue to talk about. I think we all want to talk about funding for the counseling center. Um, and potentially a couple other things. Um, I think we’re gonna want

24:49 to talk about maybe an additional staff member at the transfer station, um, to deal with, you know, the, the change of operations. That place is really busy. You know, obviously we’re taking in a lot of commercial recycling currently. Um, we’re seeing a lot of people go through that on a regular basis. Um, we just wanna make sure that we are, you know, kind of stay up with everything. Um, our office is also really busy, um, and we’re all going in many different directions and at times we need somebody just to answer the phone. Um, so those, those are the kind of the three areas that I think we’ll have a different, you know, additional conversations besides the overall budget. Well it, it’s important, uh, to be able to review the things that are needed. Um, I know that everything’s tight in the town and, uh, override didn’t pass last year.

25:39 And I hopefully we’ll be able to be able to get a little bit more out of our budget this year. It’s been a long time. Yeah. I mean, the town meeting’s gonna be very interesting. I mean, we are in a, the town itself is in a tough economic place, but individuals are in a tough economic place. Um, so I, you know, it’s gonna be a challenging town anyway. Challenging times. And what, just because I get asked all the time, extra person at the transfer station. Yep. Would that open up scenarios? You probably know the two things I get asked all the time being open through lunch, being open on Sunday. Exactly. It would not. Yeah, it would not. Yeah. Okay. So

26:25 The additional person, so when we separate the two operations out commercial and residential, you still have to have a point person. So you’re gonna have that residential transaction hunt and you’re still gonna have the commercial scale house. Mm-Hmm. If somebody’s out sick or if somebody, you know, is on vacation, the only coverage I have is to send him from my office Yeah. To cover for that right now. And then that puts us behind and stuff like that. So it’ll be somebody to, to kind of handle a different, you know, additional staffing for that. Mm-Hmm. Um, to get to operate through lunch, I really need to have three people there during lunch. So you’d have the scale operator, the scale attendant, and then somebody in the back.

27:10 Right. Just overseeing everything. Yeah. The, the three is like the minimal number that I can operate Mm-Hmm. Without, you know, essentially safety issues. Yeah, I know. I just get asked all Oh yeah, totally. Yeah. I’m sure you do too. And, uh, I, I get ask that. Yeah. And um, you know, maybe it’s something in the future, you know, if everything works out as far as like some of these, you know, making additional money, you know. Yeah. Then it’s something you can Yeah. Open up the possibility too at that point. But I think the first thing that, you know, in my mind, the first thing that we try to work towards is being open through rush. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. And then trying to grab the ex extra day. Yeah. Um, but that open through, you know, I know people get a little frustrated with that at times. Mm-Hmm. Um,

27:55 the second thing on the agenda is workshop. Um, you know, this is very common for a lot of boards to do. Um, you know, I’m not gonna say that, you know, this is kind of a new board, new, you know, everybody’s been working great together. Um, sometimes it’s great to do a little workshop and kind of, you know, and, and this includes myself and Marty and stuff like that, working on communication. Um, and we can kind of deal with some of the stuff. Um, and I just know Lene and I have been talking about workshops. Just we think that would be a great idea, um, to kind of build on some of the stuff that we’re working on. Um, and obviously we wouldn’t be necessarily talking agenda items, um, but it’d be working on communication and stuff like that. Uh, what are your guys’ thoughts on that? It’s always gonna be tough for me coming five days a week. So it’s, uh, you know, my during the week time is,

28:45 but if it’s at night, something like that, No, I, I think, you know, that’s, that’s something that we need to be, to recognize. I mean, we all have wives outside of, you know, the meeting room. Yeah. And so the idea is that we need to be, we need to recognize that and that, you know, if we’re gonna do a workshop, then we’d have to work around That. Yeah. No, I’m not opposed to it. It’s just, yeah. That’s my, my Yep. Thing. Well, as we were talking, uh, I spoke to, uh, some people at the counseling center and I did talk with someone, uh, who was willing to do it. Um, it was suggested that a ni 90 minute program, and possibly we could do it, um, before a regular scheduled meeting, uh, five 30 to seven and That won’t Work. Yeah. So

29:30 That’s, that’s right. I think the idea is to have this conversation and, and see what, you know, and I think the best way to handle this is to do a doodle poll. Um, it’s a doodle poll. So a doodle poll is just like confused On your Yeah. So trying To figure out what works for meeting times and, you know, and that way it’s not the back and forth, back and forth. And it’s kind of a, a easy way. You can put lots of dates and times on there and then you can really figure out what works. Yeah. So I did speak with her. Maybe I could just tell you who this person is and, uh, who we I was looking at became highly recommended. Um, she’s, uh, talk talks about a team building workshop and, um, she’s the executive director. Her name is Hannah, uh, Bowen of the Resolution Center in Beverly.

30:18 And to quote her, she focuses on bringing people together to solve problems and create opportunities. She brings a background in strategic planning, policy advocacy, adv advocacy, communication, and, uh, partnership management. Those the areas that she, um, works within. And, um, she would be 90 minutes at some point. And if, if we could get a two hour block, it would be good because it would be nice to have a, a lunch or a dinner beforehand, just a snack kind of meal to get us started and then go into an hour and a half program is what was suggested. So if, um, five to seven on March 12th doesn’t work,

31:04 we’ll have to go back to the drawing board. Yeah. Um, unless you can get an hour off from work. Uh, it depends. I’d have to check, but it’s not easy. So we’ll do a do poll and we’ll try to figure out the best answer. So that’s when, That’s when I talked to her. ‘cause I thought that it would, um, wouldn’t break up another day or night or something. Now, um, you mentioned about having it outside of this room, but it’s still open to the public. Correct. So it has to be an open public meeting. Uh, we wouldn’t have agenda items. Um, so the, um, select board used the Marblehead Municipal Light Building. They have a nice conference, um, room there. Um, it’s a DA accessible, um, it’s just a different meeting space than this, uh, you know. Okay.

31:52 And then we, if we did it on a night of a regular meeting, we could have a half hour to break to then jump back here to a regular spot. Or we could split up into multiple night, you know, two different nights. You don’t have, you know, Well, well, oh, two different nights. Would I, I think we could split the program up in two different nights. No, the program would be one night and then the meeting would be another Night factor involved with that. Yeah. So, alright, well let’s see. Um, if it, if it works on that date, if it doesn’t, um, You’ll, yeah, so we’ll work on putting a doodle poll together and, uh, try yeah. Try to figure this out. I Really support this enthusiastically. I think it would be fantastic to build our conversations and just be at another venue would be nice. Yeah, absolutely. These, uh, tile walls get a little boring.

32:42 And that’s everything I have. Oh, and anything else? Uh, here table, because, um, if we were expecting a speaker, so, uh, we are gonna be done a bit early. I did wanna review the next meetings if no one else had anything else to uh, Share. Oh, I do actually, if I may, I see Tom Zaro there. Um, if I can share, uh, Tom and I, uh, spent some time between Christmas and New Year’s and we went out, I know Andrew and I had gone to the Wellesley transfer station, I think it was in October. And Tom and I chose a much more dreary, miserable day to go. But, um, we were met with the same enthusiastic, a welcome of the team there. They’re just fantastic

33:28 and they take so much pride in their facility and, um, we, and I was grateful to have Tom who has a background in engineering, I think a PhD. So, you know, some of the questions he asked were much more astute than the things that, that I was asking. But one of the, the findings that we, we were able to, um, under understand was that the Wellesley town, the patrons, both the residential and the commercial patrons, uh, support their recycling and, um, they cannot afford to sort the community waste. And what they do is, you know, they bundle, what is it called? The, um, so For the recycling, they, I mean, Wellesley has a huge Facility, huge facility. So

34:14 They’re able to, you know, separate all the recycling out. They’re actually even able to separate the colors of glass out. And by doing, separating everything out, it makes it some of the valuables, they’re able to bring the valuable items out and sell those as a commodity. They have a bailing machine on site bailing. Um, and so they’re able to take all their nice clean white paper and bail that, and they’ve been doing this for a very long time. And so they have buyers overseas or in the US that will buy their product. And so they’re able to make profits on some of the recycling where the rest of us are working with other, you know, organizations like Greenworks that we’re selling, you know, bringing our material to where it’s getting sorted. The sorting is what really cost the amount of money. Right.

35:01 Um, and they’re, you know, Greenworks is able to pull out the material that’s valuable, um, and deal with the non valuable, you know, material. Um, but they’re the ones making money off of it. Obviously. There’s a lot of upfront costs with the machinery and the labor. Um, and so that’s, that’s the big difference between us, um, and Wellesley. Yes. I think one of the big things that we didn’t, you know, you and I did talk about was redemptions. Yes. So in Wellesley they pull out all the redeemable bottles and pan, and then they bring that, bring that to a redemption facility. So I know you wanted to take, try to take a look at, of an area where we could potentially build, they have a shed that they use as their redemption shed shed. So people walk up to it and sort their bottles and cans, um,

35:47 and then they just are able to bag it up and then bring it to a redemption center and make money off of it. Um, I know that’s something that you would like to look at in the future and see if we could, there, I think it would be really valuable, especially as Jenny are meeting, when she was here, she was telling us that the bottle bill is really looking like it’s gonna go through Oh, that’s great. Our state house. And if so, all the bottles would go up to a 10 cent redemption. And so if we can get, I mean I, I haven’t been able to get the data as to what it would mean if we got these bottles and cans out of our waste stream for our landfills and our, So the cans, obviously the cans the most valuable piece, the bottle, you know, obviously there’s redemption to it. So there’s value in that. Um, obviously being the coastal community, we have a huge concern about plastics

36:33 going into the environment. Um, recently when I was in California and when I was at the airport, they didn’t have any bottles at the airport. You can only buy cans and some glass bottles, but very little. Most everything was aluminum. Um, so your bottled water was an aluminum bottle. It just has high value. Um, and so it, it makes it easier for them to, you know, find a home for it and stuff like that. Um, these are all things that we need to, you know, remind ourselves of the, in the future, um, especially being a coastal community, we really need to look at the amount of plastic that we’re using and stuff like that. Um, but one of the great things about the bottle bill, if it does go forward, is that that is supposed to, and hopefully we’ll capture it, nips um, so currently nips have no value and so they’ll often just toss in the

37:18 street when you see those around. Um, you know, so when we do trash collection or trash pickup days at the beach in here and there, that’s generally an item that we find As we also do curb curbside. We do not that. I think that’s probably a big part of it. Yeah. So obviously, you know, they’re able to take the money that they would’ve put into curbside Mm-Hmm. And invest in, in buildings like, you know, in their facility, their facility’s huge. Yeah. And you know, I don’t know if people know Wellesley well, I mean they’re DPW buildings incredible. They’re always top of the line for snow removal, snow equipment. Um, but yeah, because they don’t have curbside, they wanna make sure that they, the residents have a place that, you know, what’s the population of Wellesley? 28,000. Not much more than that. Yeah.

38:06 Interesting. But can you imagine the roads are well paved as well? Yeah, they are. I mean, you know, but can you imagine having a facility that’s used for 28,000 people on a regular basis? It, it would need to be large. It needs to be very efficient. What, how, how much bigger is this compared to others? Space wise? It’s probably twice. Twice. Yeah. They have a lot of different buildings and sorting and stuff like that. Yeah. And it’s not in the center of town. It’s always Yeah. It’s, it’s a buts Needham where, and their transfer station is on the other side. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. And then they’ve got lots of conservation land around typical Landfills and, you know, old swamp area. Mm-Hmm. So I, I think there were, there were lots of learnings and I think, um,

38:51 I think the best thing is, you know, we’ve gone there a couple times. We now have a relationship with them. Um, they’re interested in coming to crs. Um, and it just gives us another, you know, organization that we can talk to. Um, how do you guys handle this? How do you handle that? Mm-Hmm. Um, it’s just a great resource for us As well. It is. Thank, I think they’re also, they were built on a incinerator area and they had lots of the, you know, challenges that, that we had here. Check them to Queen. Well, that, that’s a, that would be a, probably a longer conversation than we were able to, to steal from their workday. But, um, I think since, you know, we don’t have the resources, we can just learn a lot from the facility and the program. Mm-Hmm. And, um, I think it just,

39:39 it helps us feel informed and understand, you know, there, there certainly have different resources than we have. They have the ballor, which I think is what in this space to have a ballor. Yep. Um, but they do have some innovative projects. I think the bottle redemption was, was really exciting. It was like an easy place to start. Yep. To, It’s like going back to where we were here, we doing bottles in Case. Yeah. And, and I think if, if it’s a timely opportunity with the, the bottle bill passing, which I think we should all support, um, that hasn’t gone up in decades. Correct. And, uh, there needs to be some incentives to, to help people remember get the, you don’t need to throw these in you garbage or your recycling where we’re not sure, you know,

40:27 how well sorted that is when it gets taken. Yeah. No, obviously the, the aluminum cans is getting pulled out ‘cause that’s got high value to it. Right. Um, but the bottles and stuff like that might Not be right. So, um, appreciate our time together and, and that learning experience. Yeah. Well, I’m glad that you two had a nice day to do that. Well, you’re have such a nice day. Not a nice day at home, but a really nice trip. I really appreciate it. It, um, before we, uh, get public comment, I’d just like to go over some dates with us. Um, please don’t forget tomorrow night, I just, is it seven 30 at, no, It’s six o’clock at the high school. It’s Chris airing, uh, phenomenal speaker, uh, Xcel, six 30 Ex Celtics player. Um, and he spoke in town about 10 years ago. Yes.

41:13 It’s six 30. Six 30, okay. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. So six 30 to eight high school auditorium. All right. So don’t forget about that. Um, and, um, the state of the town for us, uh, it, I I usually show up. So if the committee, uh, you’ll, you’ll post that so that we can Yeah, I will see if we need to post it. Um, obviously, you know, it’s gonna be a, it’s gonna be available online so you can zoom into the meeting. Um, you would only January 24th. Yes. January 24th. Six. Yep. Six o’clock. It’s a Wednesday. Yes. That’s six. Um, we would only need to post it if we’re there to discuss business. So if we’re just there. Yeah. Okay. Um, okay. That’ll, that would be good also. So, um, February 5th, does that meeting date? I’ll, I’ll, I’ll clear for all of us. It should be

41:59 For now. Yeah. Yeah, that’s Fine. Isn’t it? Because it’s, It should, I mean, I get, I get home, uh, as of now, my flight gets home that day in the morning. Oh, good. So, but it has changed once, so That’s because it’s gonna impact on some things that I’m doing. Yeah. So I would, as soon as you know, No, I mean, oh, You know, I won’t know until they say, I Mean at this point he’s fine and then it would be an emergency change and it’s, Or, or, uh, yeah. We, I guess if it’s at the last minute, we Would just go on. That’s just the way it is. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. So is that all right? Yep, that’s fine. Okay. So that, I wanna make sure about that. I Had, so I had, uh, understood that there may be a conflict with that date. So we were settling the task force meeting on that date, but I think we have some flexibility.

42:44 Oh, good. Okay. ‘cause that ‘cause that was what we had. Yeah. And if not, um, I think we’d have to go to the end of the months ‘cause there school vacation in between there. And so, um, I kind of penciled in February 27th as a, as a potential meeting if you need it. But I don’t think you’ve stated that Yet. I don’t, yeah. Not at this time. Okay. Yeah. All right. So let’s just zero in on February 5th. The March meeting is the regular Tuesday. Yep. March, Tuesday, March 12th. Yep. And, um, And hopefully we’ll be awarding the contract and moving forward with that project. Can I ask, I’m sorry, one other thing. And when will we be seeing the budget? Um, so I, so I can send out the budget after like middle of February. Um, you know, right after the state of the town

43:30 and stuff like that, I can send out a basic budget and stuff like that. Okay. So it should be, I should have two budgets, um, level services. So level services is, you know, we’re keeping all the same employees, we’re keeping all the same hours and all that stuff. Um, and sometimes that’s over the two and a half. It, it is over the two and a half, uh, proposition two and a half. So if, but, so then a level budget is, you know, it is just level, you know, I can do increases for, uh, contractual increases and stuff like that. But that’s it. And obviously like for us, um, we have some very large contractual increases. We’re always over the, the two, two half percent.

44:09 Okay. Well that would be good to be able to get ahold of that as when, when it’s ready. And you’ll all, you’ll be working on the, um, town report. Yep. When will that be developed? Um, the town report is due February 9th. Um, so I will be getting that shortly. And, you know, finishing that off, um, I have to do a state report for all the trash and recycling that we do. Um, and so that’s generally, I do that first ‘cause I have to do all the numbers and then all those numbers roll into, uh, the town report as well. And then all, obviously we have all the inspections we do and then all the, um, communicable diseases and all the other reports. Is the counseling center aware that they should get that? ‘cause usually we’re Waiting. Yeah. I’ll, I’ll just, you know, I’ll check in

44:55 with Terry about that and make sure that, and Ron and everybody over there and make sure that they reference it to that. Yes. Sometimes we’re waiting for that one. Okay. Um, And just one more question you mentioned, can you just walk us through understanding, opening the bids that means Yes, they have all been submitted to You. Yep. And you’re sitting in a room and you’re opening up envelopes to say this is what the base bid number is, this is what your alternate one is. Okay. Alternate 2, 3, 4, and five From each. Yeah. As soon you have the alternates. So alternate one is the new scale house, sorry. Okay. So there’ll be a nu a big number for that. Yeah. From each of the Yep. Groups that are, yep. So each generally it’s like, you know, a on large envelope and every, you know, far from one contractor, let’s say, and all their, their base bids gonna be in there and then all their numbers and stuff like that

45:41 for the alternate bids and stuff like that. Yep. And, and you Open all at the same time? We open ‘em all at the same time. And are the contractors there or Sometimes they’re, yes. And where is that done? Uh, it’s usually done in Avid Hall. And since it’s a state, there’s some state funding. Nope, No funding. So do you have to go with the lowest bid? Yeah, you always have to do it. Yeah. Lowest qualified. Then what is qualified? So, sorry. So if you happen to open something up and somebody’s disqualified for a, um, or reason something Yeah. They fail to, you know, pro provide numbers for something, they might be disqualified. Yeah. Thank you. Good luck with that. Thank you. Um, comments from the audience?

46:30 I’ll reserve comment on the bid until I see all the, uh, the documents. But you’re bidding is a 30 39, not 1 49. I, I’d have to take talk to Dan about that. I think it’s 30 39. Yeah. So no filed sub bids for electrical filing. So They’re arguing you filed sub bids for the electrical roofing and all those Ones. So, so the 1 49. Yep. So that means you have two sub sub bids. Yep. And you have alternates for each of the, all those alternates have to be in the filed sub bids. Yeah. So, so, but not all the alternates have all the filed SI was afraid of this. I mean, it turn into a real Chinese menu. Not recommended, but anyway, take a look. Yep, please. And the other more importantly

47:20 is where’s the money company? So there’s allocated funds, uh, that are earmarked for the projects and then the $600,000 comes out of the, um, waste revolving account. You gotta be careful with the waste resolving account. You can’t spend more than the 1.7. I can’t, I can’t spend, so there’s only $600,000 allocated to this project from the waste revolving account. All right. So, so you won’t go over your 0.7, Correct. Technically I can’t go over $600,000 of the waste revolving account for this project. Why is that? Because it’s, so when I write the letter to the selectman and state what I’m using the money for, for the waste revolving account, it calls out the items

48:07 and technically has a dollar value towards it. So I say I’m only using X dollars for X, Y, and Z and I can’t go over that. I don’t recall seeing that in your letter. Yeah, you always see that that’s the letter that goes to the select right? No, I see the letter. Right. Recall seeing it broken down, but yeah, It would’ve been last for last, you know, before a town meeting and stuff like that. I’m just cautioning you can’t spend more than 1.7 million out of, out of the revolving fund in total. That’s correct. So do you have more than $900,000 other expenses? That’s correct. You can’t, can’t use it. That’s correct. So where’s this other allocated money from? So it’s the leftover money from the recovery money from the transfer station project. And which, what, what account is that? I don’t know the account. So it’s, no,

48:52 it’s generally the article number. Um, from that, that time. I’m sorry, say Generally it’s the ar the Yeah, the Article start at the beginning. I must have, So there’s an so one point, so

49:06 You wanna go over this at the office. So 1.2, I’m sorry, you don’t have to do this.

49:13 I baffled where the money’s coming from. That’s all. Yeah. So 1.25 is coming from recovered funds from the, you know, from the original project Recovered funds. What? Yep. What does recovered funds mean? They’re recovered funds. The one you got from the settlement? Yep. And where is that being held? So that’s in the same account. So the same AR account, it just goes back in. So the question will be is what’s her name? Our chief financial has to certify the funds are available when you sign the contract. Yep. So she knows where the funds are. Yep.

49:52 Next, Ms. Devin, Just a comment. Uh, 50 years ago when I bought my first house here and we started doing the recycling at that time we had to have container for green, clear brown glass, all that stuff. But, and then evidently somewhere along the line, I don’t really remember, we switched it to the mix. So to comment on that was just So Mar Marblehead We’re going back to what we started with. So our head was the first community to start for second. I didn’t know that. I didn’t, we went, I, when Joanne was reporting, I said, we are going back to the, the way we were, the brown glass. We couldn’t recycle them. We had to put it in a separate container. And we had one for cans. So we had one for the newspaper.

50:41 Everything was separate. Now we’re commingled.

50:46 Anyone else? Well, it’s eight 20. And for a motion to aurn, oh wait, sorry. What’s, uh, the Ms. Tom? Apologize, Tom. So Tom, you should able unmute, unmute yourself.

51:04 I, I did wanna comment about the Wellesley transfer station. The population of Wellesley is 28,000, but approximately a third of the population uses private recycling system. So the Wellesley transfer station accommodates a population, which is almost, at least as far as we could tell, identical to Marblehead. And if you’re there and you see the size of the bales that they’re making from the population, the, the that of 20,000 people or 10,000 households, it’s unbelievable. Uh, it, it, it was a, an amazing, um,

51:50 experience to see how efficiently they were making that happen. And the number of people that were doing that sorting in, in this cold, rainy day, um, was very impressive. So they, they have more physical space than we do and it’s probably a wealthier community. But in terms of probably the waste we generate, we are in that league and we should consider how we wanna deal with that in the long term. It was a very impressive meeting, uh, session. Thank you. Thank you for going and thank you for your comments. Is there anyone else, uh, on meeting Zoom come.

52:38 There’s other people on Zoom call. I know. Anyone else on the Zoom call that wants to, uh, speak?

52:46 All right, so now it’s 23 minutes after, but 24 minutes after eight and we will adjourn. Um, I motion to adjourn. Second. All favor. In favor? In favor. I.